


The Places We Call Home

by ashesandhoney



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Allura (Voltron)-centric, Cuddling & Snuggling, F/M, Fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-09
Updated: 2017-04-15
Packaged: 2018-09-23 01:46:47
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 30,615
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9635459
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ashesandhoney/pseuds/ashesandhoney
Summary: A little bit Allura character study, a little bit fluffy cuddle fest, a little bit playing with head canons.





	1. Chapter 1

  
  
Allura paused in the doorway to watch him for a moment. The solarium’s garden had the windows thrown wide though they looked out on nothing but empty space dotted with stars. The gardens were overgrown and poorly tended with scattered blooms browning on the floor because there was no one to sweep them up. The automatic systems could plant and water foliage to help with the oxygen needs of deep space travel but they didn't run trellises or prune. The long rows of fast growing leafy plants on the floor below did most of the oxygen production work and food production. This room wasn’t so practical, this was supposed to be a garden but that required gardeners. That required people.    
  
It was tangled and overgrown after weeks in the blackness of space but this space had been designed for the way Shiro was using it. As a place for reflection and relaxation and for remembering home. The thought came unexpected and unwanted that this untended garden might be the only place in the universe where some of these plants still grew. A flowering tree by the window hadn't bloomed yet, she didn't remember the name but she knew the flowers would be a deep vibrant blue and that once children had woven them into their hair on spring mornings. She was royalty and had grown up among soldiers and politicians. She didn't know how to garden. She hadn't had much time for flowers since she was very young but they could still make her smile.    
  
"I didn't see you there, Princess," Shiro said.    
  
He straightened. He had been slouched down against the window, a knee up and his eyes on the stars but now he sat at attention. A soldier. Maybe that was why he could set her at ease. Soldiers had a way about them that reminded her of busy palaces and official meetings and sitting at her father's side and learning what it would take to rule. Order and expectation and predictability were the hallmarks of a good soldier.    
  
She hadn't been happy with the new Paladins. The last group had been a team of soldiers carefully selected and carefully matched to their lions and their tasks, now she had a group of aliens who bickered like children and couldn't so much as respond to training drill without arguing. They were each brilliant in their own way and she was still surprised by their ability to pull together and how well they had been doing. She had no doubt that they would become the most well bonded team of paladins the universe had ever seen. Still, the ability to respond to an order would have been a nice touch. Perhaps humans didn't have a chain of command.    
  
She had been quiet too long. She crossed the room and stood beside him to look out at the dark. He didn't stand but she could see him think about it. Humans must have a chain of command. Shiro, at least, was careful with how he addressed her. Rather than make him decide whether he was supposed to stand or salute, she sat down on the ledge beside him.     
  
"What's your excuse?"   
  
"My excuse?" she asked.    
  
"For being awake at this hour," he said.    
  
"Oh, I already slept, I wanted a walk," she said.    
  
"Do Alteans only sleep for two hours?" he asked.    
  
"Four to five usually. Why how long do humans sleep?"    
  
"Eight, except for Lance who would sleep for fifteen if nothing wakes him."   
  
Well, that explained a few things about humans and how empty the ship's corridors were in the morning. They were all still in bed at this time of day. It was a shock they got anything done as a species. She wasn't sure how she'd ever fit in her training or her studies if she lost four more hours out of every day to sleep. They were a species who spent nearly a third of their lives asleep and had still managed space travel, not interstellar travel but space travel. That was impressive in its own way.    
  
"Eight, really?"   
  
He shrugged and nodded which was a distinctly un-soldier like movement but he was looking at the sky again and seemed to not be thinking too much about whether or not he was addressing a superior officer. Was that how he thought of her? Was that how she thought of him? Of the others? With only seven people on a ship, it was hard to maintain a chain of command.    
  
They didn't have much structure or order. She had found herself slipping into the haphazard schedules of the Paladins rather than maintaining her old structure from the day before. There was no language tutor to study with, no diplomatic screen call to hold, meals had even failed to happen at a regular time. There was training and emergencies and nothing in between. She was a princess without a kingdom. She would have been queen someday and now she didn’t know what she would be.    
  
"You won't have time for eight hours of sleep if you haven't started yet," she said.    
  
"I know," he said with a little half laugh as though she'd pointed out something silly.    
  
"Why are you not sleeping?"   
  
He looked at her and tilted his head to the side as he considered her. His hair fell across his forehead and she wanted to ask why it was two colours when all of the other humans had hair that was a single shade. She didn't ask. She waited for him to make his assessment. If he were making a consideration of a strategy or a decision, she would give him time to think but the expression on his face wasn't tactical and she wasn't sure how to read it.    
  
"I was thinking too hard. The Kerberos mission wasn't my first distance mission though it was an honour to be selected for it, I had worried about being in space that long. On my long flights, the Rhea mission and the asteroid belt scouting mission before it, I would watch the sky and find the pale blue dot. It helped when I was feeling adrift.”    
  
"The pale blue dot," she repeated.    
  
"There was a quote from a scientist, maybe from a movie, I don't really remember but I remember the quote," Shiro's voice had gotten softer as he pulled up old memories, "Earth is mostly water, it looks blue from a distance. There's a photograph from one of our first space probes of that pale blue dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. The only home we've ever known."    
  
"Oh."    
  
"I can't find it in this sky. I don't even know where to look to imagine that I could see our sun. There are no constellations to recognize, no planets that let me find it. I thought the old ritual of staring at the sky would help settle the other thoughts but it just reminds me, how far away I am from all of that. I hadn’t been out of sight of the dot before."    
  
What colour was Altea from a distance? Did it look green? All her memories of it were so green but she wasn't sure she'd ever thought to look back and see it from a distance when she had flown out on missions.    
  
"I'm sorry," he said.    
  
"You don't need to be sorry."    
  
"My blue dot is out there somewhere, not here, but out there. Yours isn't."    
  
"That's no fault of yours to be apologizing for."    
  
"I'm still sorry it happened."    
  
He was looking out at the dark. Usually he looked at her when he spoke but he also usually spoke to her as a soldier would speak to a commanding officer. Tonight he was speaking to her as a friend. Allura was royalty and she had family, had allies, had acquaintances but she did not have many friends. There wasn't time for many friends. The cousins she had shared lessons with as a child had been sent off to universities or into the military academies when they'd gotten older. She had never been lonely but she hadn’t had many people she would have called friends.     
  
"Give me your hand," she said.    
  
He frowned at her. Just a fraction of an expression. A little drawing in of his eyebrows. She held out her hand and waited for him to respond. He gave her the one made of human skin and bone, not Galaran tech. All the relaxation was gone now. He sat up straight again, hand held out palm up and perfectly still. A soldier again, waiting for orders or explanation.    
  
She took it and pulled it closer to her. Humans were a little too warm, maybe that's why they had to sleep to much, they burned too much energy keeping themselves so warm. What if the castle was the wrong temperature for them? But no, someone would have complained if they were too cold or too hot. They complained about everything else. Except Shiro, he rarely complained about anything.    
  
"This is something we used to do as children, my cousins and I. I'm not going to bite you, Paladin," she said.    
  
She had meant it as a joke but his tension didn't ebb. He also didn't take back his hand so she took that as an invitation. She flipped his too warm hand over in between hers and ran her fingers over it first. He was getting tenser, not more relaxed. She glanced up at him but his expression was unreadable. The warmth of him was nice. Whether or not all of him was that warm was not a thought that crossed her mind. It wasn't. She would not let her thoughts wander like that.    
  
"The kind of magic that allows you to connect to a creature like the Balmera has to be practiced. It's a way of making a connection and sharing power between living things. We used to practice on each other but it can be very relaxing and it might help you sleep," she said it all a little too fast because she was still trying to push out that thought that she definitely hadn't had.    
  
He raised his eyebrows just a fraction, a look he usually saved for Pidge's rapid fire explanations of science and computers that went so fast that no one else comprehended them or for Lance when he said something absurd. She smiled back and the skeptical puzzlement broke a little as his lip quirked up in a smile. Humans looked weird, with their rounded ears and their missing silana marks but she had gotten used to it. The strangeness of their nearly Altean faces with unmarked cheeks had faded. She didn’t see the strangeness anymore when she looked at Shiro, she just saw him.    
  
She pushed out that thought too. Humans looked weird. That was as far as that thought needed to go.   
  
His very warm skin under her fingers pulled her attention and she looked down as she gathered the focus. She was better than this. It didn't take her five minutes to pull together her thoughts, she was strong enough to reinvigorate an entire Balmera as it lay dying, a children's game should have been easy. It took a few moments for her to draw her thoughts together and each time she glanced up, Shiro was watching her with that very even considering expression and that wasn't helping.    
  
Finally the little purple spark bloomed between her fingers and his palm where it was supposed to be. She did not look up as she rolled it along the creases in his skin. They were in the same places that an Altean's would be. He had the same crease that ran around the thumb, a line that was supposed to indicate capability according to the superstitious. She could feel him watching her as she let her little purple ball of energy splinter and run over his palm and up to the tips of his fingers then back down again.    
  
She used some of her energy and a little of his. It was a parlour trick for children but he chuckled as she did it again, leaning in for a better look. She looked up and the little ball of energy scampered up his wrist towards the shirt he had pushed past his elbows and she had to draw it back down to his palm. She traced the same pattern that the magic did. That wasn't really a part of the child's game, you were meant to pass the ball of power back and forth, adding your energy to theirs until you had created something made of both of you. He couldn't do that. He wasn't Altean.    
  
"Yeah, this is nice," he said.    
  
Her attention snapped up and she lost the ball of light but he didn't seem to notice. She was rubbing circles into his palm with her thumb as he watched her. Warm. So distractingly warm. His skin was softer in some places than in others. She could feel callouses along his palm and up his fingers. Little points that proved he used that hand to do things. He wasn't a decorative politician's son, he was a soldier.    
  
"Turn around," she said.    
  
He blinked at her and the little frown not only returned but deepened and she thought perhaps she had offended him based on some Earthling rule she didn't understand. He turned. It had been confusion at an unexpected request, not offense or discomfort. She slid closer to him and some of his tension was seeping back into his posture, that ramrod straight spine and squared up shoulders.    
  
"You aren't good at relaxing, that's why you can't sleep," she said.    
  
He laughed, "I am aware of that particular personal failing, thank you."   
  
"Try," she said.    
  
He muttered something that she missed but she didn't ask him to repeat it. She spread her hands on his shoulders and even through the shirt it was easy to tell that the warmth wasn't something limited to a human's hands. He didn't have silana marks down his back or along his shoulders but she could imagine where they would be and follow the pattern. He stayed still as she ran her hand down his spine, numbering off the marks that weren't there as she did. Then back up, still counting. One, two, three, four, then the ones on his shoulders.    
  
This was inappropriate for a princess to be doing with a common soldier even if he was a Paladin of Voltron but he was human and didn't care and there wasn't anyone else around to notice how far past proper she had slipped. Touching a friend was hardly taboo, silana massage was good for the health. It was quite common for someone to call their closest friends their silana friends because of moments like these. The issue was rank but she decided she didn’t really care about rank.    
  
Shiro tipped his head to the side as she rubbed her palm against the non-existent silana on his neck. She was touching skin, just above his collar. It was too much of an invitation to be ignored and she ran her hand down the exposed column of his throat. He tilted a little farther for her and she was suddenly struck by how much he had relaxed for her and it threw off her focus entirely. His shoulders weren’t military straight, head was dropped forward.    
  
"Can I make requests?" he asked.    
  
"Yes," she said and her voice was surprisingly steady. She didn’t feel that steady.    
  
"A little lower and rub a little hard than that," he said.    
  
"Where?"    
  
He kept his head rolled to the side and she could see his faint reflection in the glass as he took her hand and guided it to the muscle where his neck and shoulder joined. He was smiling.    
  
"How hard?" she asked.    
  
"To a human, I would say as hard as you can, but you can probably break bones with that Altean strength so I don't know. I didn't realize how tense I was until you did that."    
  
"Tell me when it's too much."    
  
"Will do, Princess."    
  
She laughed and Shiro gave her a chuckle back. One day, she was going to get a real laugh out of him, one of those deep laughs that people saved for their closest friends. That should have gone into the pile of thoughts she was going to push to the side but she didn't want to push it away. She wanted to figure it out like a puzzle or a bit of strategy. How could she make him laugh? What did he find funny? What made him happy?   
  
"Tell me something about Altea," he said.    
  
She had figured out how hard she could rub at the muscles of his neck and back before he flinched, he was right about how much stronger Alteans were than humans. She could have hurt him but now that she had the right amount of pressure, he leaned back into the touch and didn't question her as she let her hand dip down past the collar of his shirt to follow the warmth of his skin just a little bit farther. He was relaxing and she suspected if she asked him to pull it off and let her run her hands all the way down his back, he would. She was not brave enough or improper enough to ask for that.    
  
"What do you want to know?" she asked.    
  
"Something I don't know," he said.    
  
"Maybe you should tell me something about Earth," she said.    
  
"Hmm. How about this: when I was five, I went out whale watching on a family vacation. We went out on a boat and for a long time it was boring but then we found a pod. Whales are the largest living creatures on earth and they would breach, swim up to the surface and flip in the arm before crashing back into the water. It was terrifying. I was little and they were so big. One of them could have eaten me whole but they didn't eat people, they didn’t even eat fish," he said. "Tell me something like that, tell me about your favourite animal or whether you have boats."    
  
"Are whales your favourite animal?"    
  
"No but they're close. I think my favourite are osprey. They're a bird of prey. I always wanted to fly, as long as I can remember and osprey are fierce hunters and fast but they always protect their nests, returning again and again to the same spot to nest and raise their families."    
  
"You want to go home."   
  
"Sometimes."    
  
"And other times?"    
  
"I am not unhappy right here, for example," he said with another one of those chuckles that wasn't quite the kind of laugh she wanted from him but still made her smile.    
  
"Not unhappy?"   
  
"No, I'm good right here."    
  
She had stopped thinking too much about the feel of his skin under her hands but the tension had melted away and she could feel that difference as she counted up the silana marks that he didn't have. One two three four up the spine, across his shoulders, back along that muscle he liked.    
  
"Trade," he said.    
  
"Trade?" she asked. Did he suddenly want to talk about politics?   
  
"Yeah, you sit there, I won't be nearly that good at rubbing your back but I can try."   
  
"Of course," she said.    
  
Stilted, too formal, her ease started to fall apart as he turned and sat down with his back against the glass. They were facing into the garden now and she sat in front of him. He wasn't actually touching her but his knees were there on either side of her, reminding her of exactly where she was sitting. He ran his hand up her back. The touch was too gentle and too slow and she tensed a little more until it reached her neck. One long steady stroke of his hand. The little points of pressure on each silana weren't there. He didn't know to stop four times on his way up her back but she didn't want to stop him to give him instructions that would mean nothing to a human.    
  
She kept her teeth sunk into her lip to keep herself from getting too distracted. She finally understood what he had wanted her to do when she was rubbing his neck. He squeezed and rubbed and she didn't care nearly so much about the missed silana. He was gentle and firm and safe. What a strange thing to think. He was safe. She was safe here.    
  
"You were going to tell me about Altea," he said and his voice was close to her ear.    
  
"We don't have waters the way that some planets do, all the water is deep under ground. So we drink from plants. Their roots carry up the water and then we can drink it from the fruit or the - oh -"   
  
"Where? Here?"    
  
"Yeah."    
  
She didn't mutter. She didn't mutter out words that weren't properly pronounced like “Yeah,” but here she was doing just that. She ignored the little mental voice from her childhood of the elocution tutor reminding her to enunciate or she would sound stupid and who would respect an uneducated ruler? Shiro found that same spot again and rubbed a slow circle that made her want to melt down into this moment and ignore the universe and all its problems. His hands were so warm. She shrugged out of her robe and he hesitated before repeating the circles he had been making with his palm but now his too warm skin was against hers.    
  
"When I was a child. I used to climb up trees and try to find epifa berries. They're a fruit about this big," she held up a hand to show him with her fingers. "Once I was up there, I would settle in near the trunk and eat my berries and watch the flocks of gli across the sky. I was always going to be a princess. I never thought about being a pilot beyond my academy training. I liked the idea of having a flock more than I liked the idea of flying."    
  
"Do we count as a flock?" he asked.    
  
"Maybe someday," she said.    
  
He laughed again but it was a little softer than his other laugh at been. She reached out and grabbed his metal hand from where it sat beside them. He hadn't touched her with it until she pulled it into her lap and cradled it in both her hands. Then she leaned back against his chest. He hesitated, lost that soft edged relaxation but it only lasted a few moments before he pulled her in. His metal hand caught her around the waist and kept her close as he settled back against the cushions of the window seat.    
  
She leaned back against him as he slouched down against the cushions. His cheek rested against the side of her head and he was breathing on her temple. Even his breath was warm. She fiddled with the lines and joints of the metal arm as his other hand attempted to push her hair out of his face. She tried to help but just ended up pushing more of it around. He laughed as he ended up with a mouthful of it but it was a real laugh. Not that little half chuckle but something deeper.

He set his cheek against the side of her head and she let herself settle against him. He was holding onto her as his laughter faded and he fell asleep, curled up between her and the empty blackness of space. 


	2. Chapter 2

When meeting with a new species there were usually pages and pages of documents to read before a royal ever set eyes on them. Stacks of histories and ethnographies and reports from the ship captains or diplomats who had first made contact would be brought to her so she he didn't usually have to guess or stumble around in the dark. Even with all that, there were still moments when she would make a faux pas, sometimes a simple one that was easily addressed, sometimes something complex and embarrassing.

She had nothing for humans. Since the Paladins had arrived and awoken her, she had been too distracted to be worried about that and even if she had, they didn't seem to care about errors in decorum or expected conduct. Their own behaviours were not consistent enough for her to build a report of human conduct. When she tried to make a mental guide to humanity, she found herself stuck on the simplest questions. How much did humans eat? Allura couldn't even answer that. Pidge seemed to eat a single meal as a social meeting with the others and then snack on protein bars while she worked. Hunk cooked multiple meals and shared them or ate them alone depending entirely on who entered the room. Keith only stopped to eat once he had near exhausted himself in the training room and then he ate twice what she considered a normal meal in a single sitting.

In questions of decorum and politeness, it got even muddier and she found herself caring for the first time.

She had taken Shiro back to his room the night before. She had needed to increase her size because he was too large to carry comfortably in her usual form but he hadn’t woken. She had tucked him into bed and left him there. The conversation and the rest of it had taken up most of her training time that morning and she had needed to rush it. Keith had shown up while she was still in the training room and she had cut her workout short to give him the space. He seemed to need it. She wondered sometimes if he would explode if he didn't get in the right number of hours of physical activity. What would happen if he was forced to sit still all day? Lance had mentioned that he had dropped out of some academy program back on Earth, maybe it was because they wanted him to sit still in class.

The day had been relatively uneventful and had ended on a dinner that everyone had attended. She was halfway inclined to order them to attend at least one shared meal every day. It was good to have them all in the same room even if it was only for a few minutes. They had come in chattering. Pidge was doing absurd things to engine drives and Hunk was facilitating the madness while Lance offered commentary. Allura wouldn't have even known if they hadn't brought it up over the meal. She was a pilot. She was a pilot trained to make wormhole jumps. She knew how engines functioned and even still Pidge's modifications sounded like madness and witchcraft.

"Please don't blow yourself or the castle to tiny pieces," she said.

"I won't! Really, I won't," Pidge said.

She hadn't spoken to Shiro at the meal or throughout the day and she wasn't sure if that was normal. How much did they usually speak? It felt like such a simple question but she struggled to find the answer and that left her wishing that there were etiquette guides for humans. Her tablet was loaded with etiquette guides for most of the known galaxy but humans were a mystery that left her frustrated. Had she offended him?

There was a tapping at her door that evening.

She had to get out of bed to answer it. She pulled robe on around the nightgown and went to open the door. She was braced for Coran. He sometimes got it in his head that they needed to be pushing the Paladins to train harder or he would bring her some idea or argument at an inappropriate hour and go on and on about it. He was like family but that didn't mean she wanted to hear about his every idea. She opened the door ready to tell him to go away before she opened an air lock and pushed him out of it.

And Shiro was standing there in regulation soldier's pajamas that he must have gotten from the ship's inventory. The bright white and blue insignia looked out of place on a human. He had pushed up the sleeves and hadn't fully buttoned the collar which saved it from reminding her too strongly of barracks inspections at 4am. There was something in his demeanour that made her think he might have been pacing.

"Hi," he said.

"Are you alright?" she asked.

"Did you? Did I?" he paused and then tried again, "I don't remember falling asleep in my bed last night."

"You didn't."

"Oh, well, it's good that I'm not losing my mind."

She laughed, "You thought you had imagined it?"

"Dreamed it."

"Do you often dream of back rubs?"

"I've dreamed," he started and then stopped. He looked away from her, his gaze sliding off to look at nothing in the corridor. She wanted him to finish the sentence but wasn't sure what he had dreamed about or what she wanted to hear him say.

"Did you want to come in?" she said.

There was a look on his face that she hadn't thought to name but it faded as he stepped inside. He had been worried. He glanced around the sitting room with it's white and blue furniture and bundle of flowers on the table as though he hadn't seen a well appointed room before. She had taken one of the largest suites. She had a bed room, office and private bathroom to go along with the sitting room. It was smaller than her rooms at home but it was far from the bunk rooms of the soldiers. He had chosen one of the barracks rooms though there were larger suites available. He could have had a diplomat's room but he had taken one of the little rooms instead. It was a strange choice.

"Your room is nicer than mine," he said.

"You can have one on this floor if you want."

"I'm not royalty."

"There isn't any other royalty here. You're not putting anyone out. There isn't anyone to out rank you here, Shiro."

"It's easier, if this is just a mission, just another assignment. Pilots on assignment get bunks not fancy apartments."

"It's more than a mission."

"It is. It is so much more and I know it," he said. He had come to a stop behind her and bent over to rest his forehead on her shoulder. She forgot what she had planned to say. There had been an argument there, a speech on duty and the right thing and the threat the Galra posed to the entire known universe but her dressing gown was open enough to expose her shoulder and he was touching her skin and it wasn't until that moment that the relief washed over her. She was relieved he had come to see her and that he wasn't angry and that he forgave her for any transgressions she might have made against human behaviours.

"Shiro," she started but he cut her off, shaking his head without lifting it from where it touched her.

"My missions were always simple. Fly to the right place and keep the scientists alive while they study the rock. Keep the engineers alive while they install the satellite, whatever it is. This one is simple too, I guess. Save the universe is pretty simple but if I think too much on it, on what the others need me to be, on the kinds of decisions I might have to make tomorrow, on the things we might face, then I get overwhelmed. My head is clearer if it is just another mission," Shiro explained.

"You're scared," she said.

"I refuse to admit that," he said with a laugh.

"Then neither shall I."

"Thank you," he said.

"You're a such a soldier," she said.

He turned and frowned at her, "I'm a pilot."

"That can be a soldier's job."

"You say soldier like it means something."

"It's a good thing to be. An honourable thing to be."

"Then I'll be honoured to be your soldier, Princess."

She had said something wrong and turned him from a friend into someone formal and polite. She had been trying to tease and pull one of those little laughs out of him. Instead he had almost saluted and his eyes were very serious. She dropped her head back and stared at the ceiling and sighed at herself then snapped back up and pursed her lips at him.

"Stop," she said reaching out and grabbing his wrist to pull him farther into the room.

"Stop what?"

"Being a soldier."

"I thought-"

"I know but it's not what I meant. Be proud of being a soldier but I was hoping that you could be my friend as well. You needn't salute or bow or call me Princess. I haven't had a silana friend in more than ten thousand years and even before that," she said.

"Silana friend?"

"I suppose it shouldn't be surprising that there isn't a word for silana in the human language," she said.

"You're speaking English," he said.

"I'm not. The castle is translating for us. It's a sort of magic rather than science but it is very simple. You're speaking your language and I'm speaking mine. As long as we're in the castle or one of the lions or even just carrying a piece of technology from the ship, the magic will translate for us. It makes diplomatic missions much easier when everyone can understand every that is being said. That's what it is designed for. It’s much better than when it was first created but it still stumbles over proper nouns," she said.

"We're not speaking the same language."

"No."

"I understand every word."

"Silana, mirisu, wella, coriria," she said rhyming off names of things that she didn't think existed on earth.

He spoke back in a stream of gibberish. Proper nouns taken out of context. Places and people and animals she had never seen. He was frowning at her, his eyes straying to the walls as though he would be able to see the castle calculating the words. She stepped up to him and ran a thumb over the frown line between his brows.

"See? I have no idea what you just said," she said.

"Oh."

The frown line was gone but she kept stroking his forehead. Every inch of him was too warm. He didn't look away from her as she stroked up to his hairline so she could play with the bit that always fell in his face. It was soft and fine under her fingers. He wasn’t relaxed yet but he also didn’t seem offended so she didn’t stop.

"So tell me what silana means," he said.

"This," she said.

She reached for his hand and guided his finger to the mark on her cheek bone. He traced the shape with a very gentle finger. This was perhaps a bit of a mistake. The silana was softer than regular skin and it felt different. If it was cut, it didn't bleed but the fluid that oozed out hurt more than any other type of injury she had ever had. They were an essential part of what made an Altean an Altean and very few other species in the universe had anything like it. The little marks helped channel magic the way that blood carried oxygen. She had never studied much biology and beyond the simplest explanations, it was all a little beyond her. Maybe someday, once it was all over, she could take some time to study biology and botany and literature and all the things she had had to cut short when the Galra had attacked.

"I thought it was just a mark," Shiro said.

"It is just a mark."

"It feels different than your skin, colder and smoother."

"It isn't just skin, it's a silana," she said.

"That isn't very descriptive."

"Describe your nose."

"What?"

"It's hard, isn't it? It just is what it is. It is a nose, it is a silana, this is a finger," she wiggled her little finger at him. "A silana just is. It is part of why the Alteans can use magic. It is not the same texture as skin, it is not the same colour as skin, it's more sensitive than skin."

"Did that hurt?"

"No, Shiro, no, that’s not what I meant."

"You have just these two?"

"I have fifteen of them," she said.

His eyes scanned down her body as though she had said something confusing. He had seen her the night before. Her arms had been bare and he'd been able to see at least part of her back, he shouldn't be so surprised. He knew that there were silana on her arms and her neck if no where else. His too warm skin hands against them had been on of her favourite parts of cuddling up against him the night before. The idea of him as a tiny child fearing that a large aquatic animal might eat him had been her second favourite part.

"How much more sensitive are they?"

"I don't know," she said. "They're sensitive the way silana are sensitive."

"Sorry," he said and took a half step back.

"Oh. You're as worried about it as I am. That makes me feel better," she said.

She laughed and dropped down onto one of the chairs as she shook her head at both of them. They were being silly and awkward instead of saying what was on their minds. She ran her fingers through her hair and rubbed her face with her palms as though she could brush away the strange stilted moment so it could go back to being easy and comfortable again.

"I'm not worried," he said.

"Liar."

He laughed and it lit up his face. He sat down across from her and leaned forward with his elbows on his knees before sitting back and scratching the back of his head. The smile didn't fade as he crossed his arms and tried to look serious again. He couldn't get that soldier's composure back and it was the most endearing thing she had ever seen him do.

"What am I worried about? Since you know these things," he said.

"You're worried about crossing a social line and offending me."

"Oh, that, yeah, I am."

It was her turn to laugh, "You won't offend me."

"You're royalty and from another planet, I'm sure there is something about humans that you find offensive or annoying," he said.

"Probably but I've decided not to care," she said.

"Just like that?"

"Just like that."

He laughed again. There was a lot she would forgive him when he was smiling. She was starting to think that even if it turned out humans preferred to bathe by rolling in mud, she still wouldn't care. Not that she was worried about that, his bathing practices seemed to be quite satisfactory so far. Anything else she could manage as it came. He was watching her and his expression was amused but intense enough to make her forget what she had planned to say next.

"I'm going to bed, or I will get cranky," she said standing.

"We can't have a cranky Princess."

She paused and turned to look at him. One corner of his lip was quirked in a smile.

"Are you teasing me?" she asked.

"Yes."

"Go to bed, Shiro. I'm tired," she said with a little smile.  

"Oh, alright. I didn't, I mean, I, um, will," he stumbled over the words more than she had ever imagined he could. He always seemed so calm and put together. He started for the door and she had to reach out and grab a fist full of his shirt to keep him from running out into the corridor.

"That bed," she said pointing towards her own bed chamber, "If you want to. I liked last night. I haven't had a silana friend in a long time. I'm happy to have you join me while I sleep."

"I still don't understand that silana friend thing," he said.

"Among the Alteans, letting someone touch your silana is personal. Not," she paused trying to choose the right word and watching his eyebrows draw together again, she finally said, "Not inappropriate, just personal. Your closest friends, the ones you trust most are silana friends. The ones you can be like this with."

"So we're friends," he said.

"Do you doubt that?"

"No."

His expression was more complicated than that. Allura knew that he meant it but there was some unanswered question, some unexplained detail in what he said. She had made the decision to not be offended by the things that he did but that didn't make him any easier to understand.

"I'm too tired to figure out human etiquette right now, do you want to sleep here?" she asked.

"Yes."

She held out her hand and when he took it, she laced her fingers with his and tugged him towards the bed room.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So this story is officially "stress relief" writing and I don't know what I'm doing with it but I am enjoying it.


	3. Chapter 3

As a little girl, Allura had slept in a nursery surrounded by cousins and the children of various dignitaries and nobles. When she had gotten a little older, she spent more nights with her silana friends than she had alone. She had slept wrapped up in her girls with the sounds of heartbeats and breathing to lull her off to sleep.

Then war had come.

She had been used to being alone, used to waking up at all hours to help manage a threat, long before her father had hidden Voltron and sealed her away in the Castle to fight another day. There had been so much to worry about. She hadn’t slept soundly in such a long time that she didn’t realize what she had been missing until it was returned to her and she slept deeply, without her mind running a mile a minute and waking her up every hour to check if there was something going terribly wrong.

Shiro was heavy and warm and held on to her. The feeling that he was a safe place in the storm hadn’t faded. Sometimes she found herself sleeping half pinned under his weight with his face tucked in against her neck. It usually started with him lying on his side but that never lasted, he would roll over in his sleep and she would have an arm across her chest or a leg over her knees at the very least. Sometimes she managed to rearrange him so she could sleep with her head on his chest while he sprawled out across the bed. It was kind of impressive how much space he managed to take up.

Usually when she woke in the dark, in the early hours of the morning, she bounced out of bed and head for the bridge or the training hall but these days she lingered a little longer. His breathing was deep and even once he had fallen completely asleep. He looked younger and softer and she liked the way his hair stuck up at all angles. It was easy to pretend for just a few moments, while they were curled together, that the universe was a safe place made up of millions of good moments and she could move from one to the next. Eventually the real world would tap at the edges of the bubble and she would have to disentangle herself and get on with her day.

It had started to feel normal, like she could expect it and it wasn’t some sort of dream that would evaporate on her if she looked at too closely. She wasn’t sure how long it had been, maybe a week, maybe longer. Marking off a calendar felt silly in the void of space. She was counting against the path of a nonexistent planet around a distant star that might not even be there anymore. They had only had to deal with one incident in that time but incidents weren’t a very good measure of time either. Time meant less to her now than it had before.

“Hey,” he said.

His hand settled on her back at the third silana. She didn’t try to hide the smile as she turned to look at him. He was dressed in casual human clothes and she itched with the desire to dress him up in Altean fashion just to see what he would look like. Probably uncomfortable. He didn’t seem like the type of person who would be comfortable in anything but casual clothes like the black cotton he was wearing or a uniform. Maybe he could be convinced to wear a dress uniform. Human military had to have some sort of formal uniforms for parades and royal inspections or whatever their equivalent was. She didn’t have anywhere fancy to take him that would give her an excuse to demand it but it was nice to imagine.

“Good morning,” she said.

“Anything out there?”

“No, we’re still two days out from Wexall. We could make a wormhole jump but that system is full of asteroids and ruined planets. We’ll be safer flying manually.”

“Anyone else up?”

“Coran is down in the engine room trying to make sense of Pidge’s design. I think he resents that she was able to build something he hadn’t thought of first.”

“Because she’s a girl?”

“No, of course not, because she’s not Altean. Other species are technologically inept. We’re the best, at everything, didn’t you know?”

Shiro laughed and threw his arm around her shoulder and pulled her closer.

“You’re good at many things but I’m not convinced you’re the best at everything.”

“Me neither, but don’t tell Coran that,” she leaned back so when she said it, her mouth was almost on his ear and she could smell the soap on his skin. He laughed again. He was tucked in around her and it was enough to shave the harsh edges off the world. She turned in his arms and rested her head against his shoulder. She adjusted her height a little bit so that she was exactly the right size for it. He looped his arms around her shoulders and she slipped her arms around his waist. It was easier to see the good in the world when she had him close.

Footsteps and voices in the hall brought an end to the moment.

Shiro stepped back and the teasing laugh had disappeared without leaving so much as a little smile in its wake. He was distant and serious by the time Lance and Hunk appeared on the bridge in the middle of a conversation that must have been about some human thing because it didn’t make any sense. They were speaking into and over each other and Lance was waving his arms as though it would help his rambling. Hunk argued back, waving and pointing and rolling his eyes.

Hunk stopped and said, “Good morning,” with a little wave.

“I’m telling you that you can’t get let to level 47 using those speed run tricks and if you don’t play level 47 then it doesn’t count as complete,” Lance said into the moment of quiet.

“What does that even mean?” Shiro asked them.

So maybe it wasn’t a human thing, maybe it just didn’t make sense to anyone but them.

“Well,” Lance started and then he was off on a complicated explanation that Allura probably could have followed if she had really wanted to but when he referenced a second movie, she gave up trying.

Shiro watched them with his arms crossed as Hunk added explanations onto whatever Lance was saying. His expression had gone from vaguely concerned to vaguely amused as though the strange convoluted explanation was entertaining to him. Maybe he did understand it. The soft warmth of him, the way he had curled around her, was gone. He was almost a different person and it so unnerved her that she needed to be somewhere else.

“I’m going to go make sure that Coran and Pidge aren’t arguing,” she said to Shiro.

She didn’t look back but she caught his startled look and could feel his attention on her as she left the room.

* * *

She went looking for him later that afternoon and found him sitting in the garden room again. He had a book with him but he didn’t seem to be reading it. He looked up when she entered the room and his eyes followed her until she sat down across from him. He gave her an uncomfortable smile and closed the book. He held it with both hands and looked up at her.

“I didn’t,” he paused and tried again. “I didn’t want to have to explain or justify or discuss this thing between us with the others. I don’t know what they would have asked. I am sorry and we can have a team meeting if you want them to know.”

He spoke in a rush, speeding up towards the end. His eyes never left hers. She sat down and pulled the book away so she could take his hands. Once she had left him on the bridge, she had realized that she was overreacting. There had to be some cultural reason that he had seemed so uncomfortable to be caught touching her. Among the Alteans, that sort of behaviour would have meant that he was ashamed of the relationship between them or perhaps that he didn’t trust either her or didn't trust Lance and Hunk. All of those possibilities bothered her.

“I don’t think we should hold a team meeting,” she said.

“Alright.”

“But is what we are doing something that warrants keeping secrets?”

“No but that kind of touching isn’t usually something that humans do with their friends and even with – well – we don’t usually get that physical in public. We don’t really have an equivalent for the silana snuggle buddies thing. It was going to take some explaining.”

“Snuggle buddies?” she said and started to laugh. She leaned over her knee and laughed until she didn’t feel so tense.

“I like the phrase snuggle buddies,” she said when she had regained her composure.

“Well, I’m glad I can be entertaining,” he said.

“Your species doesn’t seem unaffectionate. Are snuggle buddies really so unusual?” she said.

“I guess so?”

“Why do hide your close connections away? If you had a spouse, would you hug them in public?”

“Yeah, I guess, but not like that.”

“Why not? That was hardly anything scandalous.”

“It kind of was? I mean not... or it's that... I just," he stopped and sighed. "Because we don’t. There isn’t really a good reason. It just isn’t polite to cross certain lines. I didn’t mean to make you uncomfortable. It was… I was trying not to make things awkward.”

She shrugged and leaned back, still studying him. If someone had asked her to explain the reasons behind some facet of her culture, she wasn’t sure she would be able to do it either. She could explain certain manners and customs from her training as a diplomat but something like why Alteans formed the kinds of friendships they did wouldn’t be any easier than what she was asking him to do. As she watched him try to organize his thoughts, she realized what kind of relationship the others would assume they were engaged in.

“Oh,” she said and he raised his eyebrows at her. She smiled and asked, “Socially, is it easier to keep it a secret?”

“I don’t know,” he said.

“I don’t want to try and hide it and try and remember when I can or cannot touch you. I don’t want to have a team meeting about it but they’ll eventually put together some sort of explanation that makes sense for humans without needing us to lay it out for them.”

“I can work with that but I’m still not comfortable with that much PDA.”

“PDA?”

“Public displays of affection.”

That made her laugh again. She was going to have to start writing down all the adorable things he said. First snuggle buddy which she suspected sounded even more adorable in his own language than it did in translation and now this. Allura had always thought that the best part of finding someone, as a silana friend or as something more exclusive, was showing them off and letting everyone know. He hadn’t explicitly said it but his preference for privacy was written into the way he was looking at her.

“I will keep the PDA on the down low,” she said and it was his turn to laugh at something she said. She had stolen the expression from Pidge who had used to promise that she would keep any information about her use of plasma coils away from Coran. That thought made her realize something else. “I’m going to have to tell Coran properly though. He’d take offense if I didn’t. He’s probably going to bother you about it.”

“Can I tell him to fuck off if he does?” Shiro asked, his laughter fading.

That made her laugh again, “Please do.”

“Want to go to bed early?”

“It is the middle of the afternoon.”

“It’s late afternoon.”

“That’s a semantic argument that doesn’t mean anything.”

“Please? You fall asleep so fast, I worry about you a little bit. It’s like there’s a switch in your brain and you just turn it off and you’re out like a light. Then you always get up before I do. I want a little bit of time with you awake and paying attention to me,” he said.

“I like sleeping. I haven’t slept so well in years,” she said.

“Neither have I but I still want a little bit of time with you when we’re both awake.”

Shiro stood and held out a hand to her. There were any number of things she could be doing. She could triple check the flight path before they entered the asteroid field. She could write up her daily report for whatever historian would someday find it. She could go try and badger Lance and Hunk into running the training drills they had made an art of avoiding. She could finally get around to teaching someone else how to fly the castle, just in case. She kept meaning to do that and kept forgetting or getting distracted. She could go talk strategy and history with Coran. There were so many things she could be doing.

None of them were nearly so appealing. She took Shiro’s hand and let him pull her to her feet.

Allura was smiling by the time he had her on her feet. Maybe the assumptions that Shiro feared the others would be making weren’t so far off if he could make her smile like this. She pushed that thought off for some time later. It was enough to have this. She didn’t need to worry about anything else, not right now.

She leaned up and slid her cheek along his. He didn’t draw back but he didn’t return it either. Was there a human equivalent to this? She rubbed her along the other side of his face and then pulled back to press her forehead against his.

“Um?” he started.

“Come on,” she said grabbing his hand and pulling him out of the room.

For someone prone to quiet seriousness and taking charge of a situation, he was surprisingly agreeable about being put wherever she wanted him. He smiled and laughed and played with her hair. She pulled out the ties that kept it out of her face so that it fell around them as they climbed into bed and she pulled him down. He lay on his stomach and propped himself up on his elbow. She cuddled in close to his side where his metal arm lay against the mattress.

Amputations had always been a thing to be pitied at home. Most deviations were. The Alteans weren’t exactly forgiving about a lack of perfection. After Allura had fallen off a rooftop when she was a child, a nanny had once told her no one would follow a Queen with a limp so she had better be more careful in case she broke a bone. And yet, pity wasn’t the right word for what she felt when she pushed his shirt up to his shoulder so she could see all of it. It fascinated her far more than it disturbed her even though it was Galra tech, it was still his not theirs.

Shiro was careful not to touch her with his metal arm but didn’t fight her when she grabbed it and traced the joints and edges of his fingers. He watched her with steady eyes as she did it. She was ready to stop if he asked her to but he didn’t say a word. He didn’t argue or question when she rearranged the way they were lying so that his skin was against a silana. He seemed to find her tendency to press her cheek against his endearing or maybe strange. It obviously didn’t feel nearly as nice for him as it did for her but he was happy to let her do what she wanted.

“So what do humans do?” she asked.

“Do? Lots of things,” Shiro’s voice was softer, almost hazy.

“I mean like this,” she said running her fingers up his arm until they found skin and then along that until they could stroke his hair.

“Well, that’s nice,” he said.

“Are you trying to be dense?”

“Not intentionally.”

“You’ve been doing things that I like. You’ve been letting me make all the decisions. I want to know what humans do,” she said. His eyes caught on her face and she could see him thinking but he hesitated. She sighed and asked, “Do you bite?”

He snorted.

“No? Are you sure?” she asked poking at his mouth to find out if his teeth were sharp. They didn’t look sharp but once the idea had occurred to her, she wanted to know. Sometimes flat teeth were sharp, she had read that somewhere once though it had been in a book about river otters not about sentient near-Altean aliens. He laughed and pulled away from her, finally grabbing her wrist to stop her from prodding at his mouth.

“No, I don’t bite,” he said.

“There’s something you want, I can tell.”

“There are lots of things that I want.”

“So pick one, pick a few, just tell me.”

She rolled over, pushing with enough strength to force him back. He didn’t need the persuasion and she would have felt guilty for pushing him around if he hadn’t given her a little smile as he settled onto his back. She swung a knee over his hip and sat up over him. For the first time, he didn’t hesitate as both hands settled on her thighs.

“Tell me.”

“I’m distracted now,” he said.

“Is it embarrassing, this thing you won’t tell me?”

“I don’t know. I don’t think so. Maybe? I don’t know what’s embarrassing for Alteans.”

“If I promise to say yes, no matter what it is, will you tell me?”

He looked up at her and then his attention skated away. She ran her finger down the bridge of his nose, over the scar tissue there and he looked back at her. She kept her finger on the end of his nose and he stayed where she had put him. It wasn’t quite obedience. It was something else. Something she couldn’t quite define neatly. He raised his eyebrows in a silent question. It was fast becoming one of her favourite expressions on his face. The questioning eyebrows and the soft smile together were a kind of perfection.

He held onto her a little tighter and she thought she knew exactly what he was going to ask for.

“I’d like to kiss you.”

And that was not it.

“I have never done that,” she said.

“Really? Do I need to explain it?”

“It isn’t an Altean thing but it’s not an exclusively human thing either. I know what it is, even if I haven’t done it.”

“You’ve never spent this much social time with a non-Altean, have you?”

“No, I had barely completed my diplomatic training when the war started. I hadn’t met many alien species and none who weren’t already established as close allies. I can tell who the diplomatic relations and major cultural attributes of the Clexians, the Galra, the Bruno and a few others but I haven’t met most of them outside of state dinners. I guess that was all a long time ago. I doubt the Clexians even still exist. If the Alteans are gone then they probably are too, they were our closest allies.”

It didn’t feel all that long ago. She had spent hours in classrooms studying treaties and etiquette, learning books of Altean law and massive files full of universal common law. She had written exams beside the law school candidates who would go on to become lawyers and politicians. Up until she cracked her first law textbook, she had liked school. She had loved collecting up pieces of information, had loved the practical exams in flight school, had taken pride in working through every simulation and mastering not just the pilot’s controls but also the mathematical models that explained the teledove’s navigation system and the propulsion calculations of traditional engines.

Law, on the other hand, had been tedious and infuriating. One misplaced verb completely changed a passage and not in the neat logical way that misplaced numbers could ruin a mathematical model. Law was arcane and incomprehensible. She had made second grade as a pilot before she had completed the course work for her first year of the diplomatic certification she would need to rule effectively. It had taken two years of diligent miserable study to finish it. It was almost a relief that the law libraries of Mirisu were gone.

Just thinking that thought made her feel guilty but Shiro distracted her from memories of law and diplomacy and the magnitude of all that loss by twisting his fingers into her hair and letting it slide loose. She didn’t need math or law books to make sense of this. He was studying her again and she slid down so she could lie against his chest and bring their faces closer together. If he wanted a kiss, this was going to work a little better for it.

“Is it rude to ask how old you are?” he asked.

“You’re getting distracted,” she complained.

“I’m curious.”

“187 but if anyone else asks, we round it up to 200, no one needs to know that I’m that young,” she said.

“Wait, what?”

She repeated the number, counting back in case she had got it wrong, “Plus ten thousand years but I think it’s better not to count them. If I wasn’t awake for it, it doesn’t matter.”

“How long do Alteans live?”

“Usually a little less than a thousand, there was a man in Ersu who was twelve hundred and forty-two but that might have been an urban legend. I don’t think anyone ever said his name when they told the story so maybe he never existed. Why? How old are you?”

“26.”

She pushed herself up on her elbows to look down at him. There was no way he was that young. He was looking at her with the same kind of baffled confusion that she felt.

“You’re more than twice as old as I will probably ever live to be,” he said.

“That is unexpected, how old are the others?” her voice slid back into the kind of polite flatness that she had abandoned as they had gotten closer. Her diplomat voice. She didn’t know what to do with this new piece of information and letting the mask of manners fall back into place gave her a little bit of distance to work it out.

“I don’t know exactly. Pidge is the youngest, she’s fourteen or fifteen. The others are all between sixteen and nineteen? I think Keith’s a little older than the other three but I haven’t exactly read their personnel files. I only know for Pidge because her brother mentioned a thirteen-year-old sister once. How old is Coran?”

“He’ll never admit to anything older than five hundred but it’s got to be closer to seven because he was old enough to be a member of my father’s court when the Castle of Lions was built.”

“Huh.”

She nodded.

“Are Alteans still babies at my age?” he asked.

“Not babies. Children. The kind of children that are cute and silly and probably shouldn’t be left alone with sharp objects.”

He laughed at that, “Does it bother you?”

“I’m thinking on it.”

Yes. It bothered her. It bothered her that his entire life would be measured in decades. It bothered her that it had taken her an entire human lifespan to make it to flight school. It bothered her that he had managed to achieve a tactical awareness and the kind of calm she had to fight to maintain in fewer years than it took most children to graduate into high school.

There were plenty of short lived species in the universe. The Arusians lived to be only a few decades old and there were lists and lists of other species that had wildly shorter or longer lifespans. Sentient lifeforms took many forms. The Balmora was different from the Alteans who were different from the Galra who were different from Humans. That was just how it was. It shouldn’t come as such a surprise but she was more than a little surprised. She was baffled.

She ran her finger down his nose and then traced his cheekbones and his jaw. She smoothed out his eyebrows and pushed back his hair and ran her finger along the curved of his ear. He smiled at her as she did it. His own discomfort faded as she studied him.

He looked so close to Altean. Hers was a species that came in a wide enough variety of colours and with enough variation in features that she had simply let herself forget that these Humans were aliens. Aliens. Not Alteans from some undiscovered culture but aliens from another corner of the galaxy. She had forgotten that. She had let herself get comfortable with slotting them away as close enough to Altean. That humans was too short-lived to qualify as a higher sapient and be allowed a seat on the interplanetary council was jarring.

She had been raised on the understanding that the lower sapient species were less than the Alteans were and so it was her responsibility to rule not over her own people but to protect others that she met. They were not the same but they still had value and still deserved safety and ability to live their lives as they saw fit. Still. They was a reason that the council only allowed the higher sapients, everyone knew that the short lived species were less advanced, less capable of advanced thought and planning, less adept at reasoning and learning.

All of that had been presented as fact when she had been younger. It simply was the way the speed of light simply was. She hadn't thought to question it.

Her world had shifted on this detail.

The humans had been chosen to pilot Voltron and she knew them. They were all going to die before they saw their first centennial. They would never live to be old enough to enter adult society on Altea but she knew them. They weren’t villagers in need of protection. They were not ideas. They were individuals. Pidge’s strange brilliance and Lance’s unstoppable energy and Hunk’s caution and intense sense of responsibility and Keith’s focus were all so familiar. They were people the way her people had been once. Each unique but still people.

It was hard to reconcile the two things. They were people and yet not higher sapients. They didn’t qualify. All the reasons she had ever been taught as to why they didn’t qualify on the same level as the Alteans and the Clexians and the others fell apart in front of all the evidence that she had about humans. Did every other species she had ever written off as valuable but not equal have the same complexity as humans did?

She looked down at Shiro and tried to make sense of it all.

“I am bothered but it doesn't matter,” she said and as soon as the words were out, she realized that the decision made sense. It changed nothing. The humans were the ones who piloted Voltron. They were the ones who had been given the mantle of protecting the universe and they were the ones who had picked it up. How long their average lifespan was did not factor in as an important detail. At all. It was as meaningless as hair colour. Their conduct was what mattered and they had more than risen to the challenge. Shiro had more than risen to the challenge.

“What are you worried about?” he asked.

“It is more complicated than I want to explain right now. Ask me again tomorrow.”

He reached up and traced her features as she was doing to him. She leaned into his hand as it slid along her silana and he paused to rub his thumb in slow circles. Her eyes fluttered shut. She really didn’t care about details of politics and analysis of species. At all. She only cared about him and his warm hands and soft steady voice. Everything else could wait. All the prejudices of her upbringing paled in comparison to this moment.

“You were going to teach me how to kiss,” she said.

“Was I?” he asked with a smile.   
  
“Weren’t you? I’ve never kissed anyone in my life. If you want a kiss, you’re going to have to teach me how to do it properly because the mushing you mouth against someone else’s seems like a silly thing to do.”

“It’s really very nice.”

“Prove it,” she said.

Shiro laughed.

He caught her face in his hands and ran his thumbs over her cheeks, rubbing those slow circles against both silana until her eyes fell shut again. He had touched her with the metal hand without noticing and the harsher drag of that hand compared to his other was holding her attention completely. Then he was pulling her closer and his mouth touched hers. He did something, pressing and pulling her closer. It was very gentle and very much eclipsed by his thumbs on her cheeks. When he pulled back, she forced her eyes open and he was smiling at her. Whatever he had done he had liked and that was enough to make her smile back at him.

“Give me your hands,” she said reaching up and taking them. He let her. He always let her do whatever she wanted. “Kiss me again.”

He did. His chin lifting to bring their mouths together. She could focus on it this time. It wasn’t as disgusting as she had imagined when someone had first described kissing to her years ago but it wasn’t exactly magic but he seemed to like it and that was good enough. He smiled at her as this kiss came to an end. He kissed her end of her nose and she pulled back in surprise.

“It’s better if you kiss me back.”

She wasn’t prepared for participation. What was she supposed to do in return? His mouth’s movement against hers was nice but she didn’t know what to do to return it. Anxiety crawled up her stomach. She had no idea what he wanted from her. She pushed all of it away. She was not a school girl on her first date. If he wanted something from her, he was going to have to explain it. It wasn’t her fault if she didn’t understand his bizarre culture.

“So teach me how to do that,” she said.

She pressed her lips to where his silana would have been. Kissing his cheek seemed simpler than trying to deal with his mouth. His cheek didn’t move, it was a safer target for her to practice with.

“It’s not just pressing your mouth against me,” he said.

“So what is it, Shiro?” she asked, letting a little bit of the anxiety she was trying to ignore slip into her voice. It sounded like annoyance and she regretted it immediately. She wanted him to like this and she was afraid that he didn’t. She was worried that he was disappointed in her. She argued with herself that she had nothing to be worried about but the thoughts kept circling back around.

He just laughed and said, “Like this,” as he pressed his lips to her cheek.

She tried again, pressing her lips forward in an imitation of what he had done. He laughed in her ear and whispered, “Better. Now try this.” He pressed his lips against her again and moved them. It took her a few attempts to match it well enough for him to say, “Yeah, like that.”

“Try again, like you did the first time,” she said.

“Look at me.”

She did as he asked and he caught her face again to pull her in until their mouths came together. She felt clumsy and lost as she tried to match what he was doing. It was either close enough to what it was supposed to be or he just didn’t care because he didn’t stop her. The metal hand slid up her neck to cup the back of her neck. The feeling of it sliding over the silana at the top of her spine was nearly pain but she didn’t want him to stop. She was thrumming with energy and it left every silana sensitive. His other hand slid up her cheek.

The kiss was less than the pressure of his metal palm and his circling thumb but she could tell how much he liked it. His whole body was pressing up into her in a way he had never done before. She couldn’t keep up with what his mouth was doing. She could barely keep up with her own rushing thoughts.

She tried to return it again but that attempt fell apart when he rolled her over onto her back. She gasped in surprise and his tongue slid into her mouth. Disgusting. Maybe wonderful. Definitely unexpected. None of her reactions would settle into something she could understand. She might have stopped him. Might have demanded an explanation for the intrusion but he had rearranged his hold on her and his hand had left to cheek to slide up under her shirt. It locked around her waist, his arm pressed against the fourth silana at the base of her spine. She squirmed for more contact, pressing up into him. He could do anything he wanted with his mouth as long as he stayed this close to her.

“Allura?” he said.

She hadn’t quite realized that they had stopped until he said it. He was still curled around her and she still lay out on her back. Her body temperature was too high but that might have just been from being so close to him. She had shoved his shirt up so that she could run her hands along his skin. He pressed down into her and his bare stomach against hers was the first thing that she registered when she started to regain her composure. Both their clothes were askew, pushed up and shifted out of place so that skin touched skin.

“What if we weren’t friends?” she asked.

“We are friends,” he said.

“Hmm,” she muttered a protest and nuzzled against his neck, letting her cheek slide along his jaw.

“Allura,” he said again.

“What if we were something else?” she asked without raising her head.

“What else do you want to be?”

“Lovers,” she said.

“Oh.”

He sounded so surprised by the word that her heart almost stopped beating. It had felt like a sure thing, like the kind of thing that only needed to be put into words to be made real. They were well over every line that she had been taught was normal for silana friends but his culture didn’t have silana friends. His lines weren’t the same as hers.

The kissing and the touching and the nearness of him were undeniable but that didn’t mean he felt the same things she did. There were lines she had only ever skirted before but she didn’t know enough about him, enough about humans, to know where his lines were. She started to reel it back in, to apologize and try and put it back to the way it had been before she had said that stupid word.

She hadn’t started to speak when her caught her cheek and pulled her face back so they were looking at each other.

“No, no, no, no. No,” he said. “I want that. I really really want that. I thought you didn’t. I thought this all meant something different to you. I didn’t want to push or demand. I. I mean. Damn it. I’m not good at words.”

“You’re doing just fine,” she said.

“I’m not.”

“You are.”

She felt him inhale as he started to say something else but the words were lost to an alarm bell ringing out over them.

“Is that actually happening?” Shiro asked.

“Yes.”

“Fuck me,” he said.

Then he rolled over and pushed himself up. A moment later she followed him, trying to push her clothes and her hair back into order before she made the run for the bridge to find out what had happened. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'd apologize for the abrupt ending here but that implies that I'm sorry and I'm not. Not at all. 
> 
> I'm convinced that there's a strong case to be made for Shiro swearing like a sailor except it's a kid show. Lance probably swears to be cool and ends up looking like a nerd (because Lance is a huge fucking nerd). Hunk probably never swears even when it is completely warranted. Hunk probably says things like fiddlesticks and oh sugar instead of real swearwords. Pidge swears a normal amount. Keith doesn't swear often but when he does it pulls everyone else's attention because it usually means something bad is about to happen. Like he swears right before the plane crashes but only in the moment right before the plane crashes. 
> 
> I like the idea of giving Allura a little bit of a superiority complex to work through. She's a champion for everyone but she's also the princess of a extremely powerful species and that's got to leave you with some interesting mindsets. 
> 
> I get my new apartment this week which means fully functional internet connection for me! That doesn't necessarily mean that I will post more frequently (I'm still only getting writing done on weekends right now). I'm just happy about it.


	4. Chapter 4

She pressed her shoulders to the wall outside his room and waited. They had all made it back safely and they had all checked in once they had landed but the battle had hardly gone smoothly.

She had once sat in situation rooms that would barely have registered it. It might not have even made it to her briefing folder if Voltron hadn’t been involved. It would have ranked as less than a border skirmish in a grand scheme that included true battles and casualty numbers and tactical plans that spanned months and years. War happened on maps and was measured in numbers.

Out here all those numbers and maps and tactics felt different.

She had never thought herself callous or indifferent. She knew that each number on a casualty report was a person and each person had someone who cared about them, who would be devastated by the loss of a brother or a sister, a child or a parent. She knew that. She had lost people too, by the time her father was taking desperate measures and disbanding Voltron all together, the war had dragged on long enough that everyone had someone who had been reduced to a name on a list.

And yet, to be so close to it was starting to wear on her.

There had been a moment where she had thought they had lost the blue lion. That loss would have been on her. Not just the tactical loss of the piece of Voltron but the personal loss of the boy in the pilot seat. It was her responsibility. They were her responsibility. These alien children were fighting a very old war and she needed to keep them on task and as much as possible, safe. She couldn’t tell some days whether or not she was doing it right. Should she have gone down to check on Lance herself? She thought he would play it off as nothing in front of her but maybe it would have been better to go and see him herself instead of leaving it to Shiro to make sure that the Palladins had all come through the fighting without falling apart.

Shiro was their leader and while she had a responsibility for all of them, she wasn’t the one who would be able to talk Lance down if he was upset or keep Keith from saying the wrong thing and making Lance yell. He saw it when Pidge was upset long before she would notice. It was still her responsibility, still her Palladins, still her war and she wanted to hear it from him that they were all going to come through it fine.

So she waited outside Shiro’s door.

It was possible that she was just as worried about him as she was about the others.

She could have called him up to the bridge if she had wanted a formal report. That was how it would have worked if they were an army and not a bunch of lost children on the edges of the galaxy. A report filed with a senior officer would be consolidated and passed up the chain of the command until it ended up on her desk. She didn’t call down to the hangar to ask for that. She didn’t want a report. She wanted to know that everyone was alright. It was different. So was not a head of state making decisions, she was as much a part of the individual battles as they were. They were in this together and the formality of reporting structure wasn’t going to make it any easier to lose them.

“Hey?” his voice was soft and she snapped her eyes open and pushed off the wall to stand straight.

“Allura what’s wrong?” he asked.

“Are you alright?”

He gave her a soft smile, not quite like anything she had ever seen from him before and said, “Yes.”

“Lance?”

“Is pretending it didn’t bother him. He’s not injured. He was just bounced around a bit and I think he’ll be fine. He was calling Keith names when I finally gave up trying to get them to debrief,” Shiro said.

“Usually that would be a bad sign.”

“It’s Lance and Keith. I’ll be worried the day they don’t fight over nothing.”

She nodded. None of it was as surprise but hearing him lay it out neatly and with a little shrug as though it was just another day helped push away the last of her little bit of panic. There was an art to maintaining the mask and she’d learned how to do it when she was very young. No one else needed to know that their leader was terrified. She was so good at it that sometimes she tricked herself and the panic would sneak up on her after the worst of the crisis had passed and she would be left alone in her room, struggling to catch her breath. It wasn’t that bad but Shiro didn’t see it and Coran hadn’t either. She had hidden it away neatly and completely.

“Here,” Shiro said and keyed in his code to push the door open.

He stood back to let her in. It was even more sparse than she had expected. He hadn’t added extra blankets or pillows. He kept all his clothes packed away in the little cabinet. It looked almost uninhabited. An empty water class sat on the little desk and there was a book on the table by the neatly made bed but otherwise it was pristine.

“I worry about you,” she said.

“On missions?”

“Because you make your bed like that and only sleep with one pillow.”

He laughed at her, loud and right behind her ear. If he could laugh like that then his paladins were fine. He leaned past her and looked around the room as though considering it from someone else’s point of view for the first time. He shrugged at her and she sighed.

“I’m quite serious. Who sleeps like this if they have another option? There are more blankets on this ship. Go get one. There’s a supplies cabinet on every floor. They even come in colours.”

“I’m fine and if I remember correctly, I’ve been sleeping in your bed more than I’ve been sleeping here.”

“That isn’t the point. I’m sure this is what it looked like before that started.”

“I’m a military brat. I’ve lived on military base rations and regulation laundry since I was a kid. I was born on a moon base. We didn’t have running water until my mom transferred to Yokohama when I was nine. That’s a lot of years of perfectly made beds and plain cotton sheets.”

“Moon base.”

“Yes. Earth has military outposts on the moon. There are nine of them –“

“Nine moons?”

“Nine bases on one moon and they were all built a long time ago so the water reclamation is awful. Fancy laundry takes water to wash it and it costs money to bring up from the ground and supply ships are usually full of food and other necessary things. Luxury isn’t something that I’m used to. I don’t need more than this.”

“You could have more than this.”

“I don’t need it though. What I need is a shower. You stay here and judge my interior decorating. I’ll be back in a few minutes.”

He reached into the cabinet and grabbed a towel and a handful of clothing seemingly at random then disappeared back out through the door. He probably had a system for his socks. She smiled but didn’t go to check. It felt too private to go through his things especially when he obviously didn’t have many. She sat down on his bed, tucked her feet up and started letting her hair out. She had twisted it back tightly and it was nice to run her fingers through it and let herself relax by degrees. The crisis was over.

She got up after a few minutes and propped his door open. She went to the supply storage and started sorting through it. Alteans were a colourful people and even their military bedding came in colours but she dug through it and found something in a navy blue that she thought wouldn’t annoy him. She also grabbed him a few extra pillows because it was a bed not a plank. She didn’t remake his tidy blanket, she just added the new bedding and then dropped back down to sit on it and wait.

When he came back he laughed. She looked up from his book, which she couldn’t read, and shrugged in answer to his expression.

“Really?” he asked.

His hair was wet and he was wearing more regulation pajamas. These ones were gray. He probably had to dig to find them. Most of the army clothes were blue or yellow or some combination of the two but he’d managed to find the most muted colours on the entire ship. It was impressive really, his commitment to being as monochrome as possible. The desire to dress him up came back to her. He would look good in rich colours, dark blues or strong reds.

“You’ll be more comfortable. Be glad I didn’t pick you something pink. I’m thinking of getting you flowers or throw pillows.”

“Thanks, mom.”

“I’m very definitely not your mother.”

“She’s the only other person who ever made my bed for me.” he said but then his expression shifted just a little and he said, “But no, you’re really, really not.”

She held out her hands to him and he came to sit down beside her and pull her in against his side with his human arm thrown over her shoulder. And the last of her panic, the little residual bits of anxiety that she hadn’t realized she was still holding onto, were washed away by the touch. She came from a culture that lived closely and all the months without someone to touch had worn on her. It was a relief to have someone to come home to once the danger was past.

She flipped the tablet reader she had picked up over in her hands. It wasn’t from her ship. It was a piece of human technology but the screen was covered in the orderly lines of text of a book of some kind.

“Why can’t I read your book?” she asked.

“Because it isn’t in Altean? Your magic translator thing doesn’t seem to work on print.”

“Pidge taught me your alphabet, I should be able to sound out the words and I can’t even find any of the right symbols.”

“I can reset it, hang on,” he said reaching for the tablet.

“What language is this in if it isn’t in human?”

“It is in a human language. We have more than one. We have a lot more than one. This thing is Pidge’s and it’s got a pretty good translator in it even her collection of novels is really small and all her non fic is too technical for me to make sense of. I read through the last collection of fantasy stories nearly a month ago and I’ve been trying to reteach myself Japanese by translating things back and forth, it isn’t working all that well.”

“Japanese is a human language but not the human language. What do you call the one that Pidge taught me?”

“English. Lots of languages use the same alphabet but all the paladins speak English so that’s what she was trying to teach you.”

“So you forgot this other language?”

“I never knew it well,” he slipped down so that he could pull her back against the new pillows she had set up along the wall. She didn’t stop him to point out that pillows made everything nicer. “My mom was born in Tokyo. Not actually in the city but they just sort of call it all Tokyo these days. All the surrounding towns were sort of swallowed by the city. She actually lived in Kiyose but only a local would know where that is. Her parents spoke Japanese and she spoke it as a kid too but she wanted to be a pilot and the major spaceports were in America, Russia or China. She learned English in school and took the entrance exams for the UN space program when she was only thirteen. Her parents held her off a year but she eventually moved to Nevada to train.”

Allura settled down close to him and ran her fingers through his hair as he spoke. It was nice to just listen to his voice. She couldn’t really make sense of the place names but she found herself able to imagine this girl who left her home to follow a passion. It seemed right that Shiro’s family would be people like that.

“She did well and moved out of the spaceflight program that I would take one day, I did my initial training in France not Nevada but same program. My mom became a test pilot. Which is a stupid thing to be. Test pilots die and they died a lot in those days as they perfected the ships that could cover distance in space. I was flying a ship my mother had tested when the Kerberos mission went south.”

“But she survived.”

“No. She died in a test ship when I was six years old. Just old enough to be starting school.”

“I thought you said– “

“I’m telling you a story, be quiet and let me tell it,” he said.

She put a finger on her lips and he laughed and kissed her temple. He was relaxing too. She could feel the changes in his body as he let the tension of the day go. A part of her wanted to stop his story time and this gentle quiet and demand they try and find that place they had been before the alarms had gone off but that felt so far away from this moment that it seemed impossible. They were friends. Anything else that happened didn’t change that. They were still friends and if they found that moment again, they would still be friends after it as well.

“My test pilot mother was still living in Nevada when she fell in love. It was a UN facility and the UN loves to throw these cultural events. My mom was not the kind of person who did that kind of thing. She studied and trained and then went back to her room and studied some more.”

“I am shocked to learn that about your family.”

“Shut up.”

Allura covered her mouth again but he was laughing.

“I think I probably worked so hard because I felt like I needed to live up to her memory. I was always Chiho Shirokawa’s son when I started training with the fleet. Always. When I showed promise in the screening program when I was still a little kid, they started talking about how I could be what she was. It was always there. Not pressure exactly but expectation.

“Anyways back to this cultural event. The woman who was heading the Japanese group was Lilly Kurogane. Lilly is like an eighth generation American and proud as hell of that. Her family had come from Japan though nearly four hundred years before and she was proud as hell of that too so she had volunteered to take up the organizing for the event. She was that sort of person. She will organize anything. She could probably get cats to march in formation.

“She’s a mathematician. Is. She’ll probably never retire. She tried to convince Chiho to help her organize everything or at the very least to cook something traditional for their little booth at the fair. Chiho was too busy and told Lilly to fuck off. More than once until finally – and the whole family tells this story over and over again – she went to the grocery store and bought a case of instant ramen noodles and dumped them out on Lilly’s desk and said, ‘This is as close to any kind of cooking as I get, but I will take you out for Udon if you leave me alone for ten minutes.’ They hit it off. They got married about three years later and when Chiho got the posting on the moon, Lilly went with her.”

“Ah.”

“After she died, Mom moved me and my sister back to Japan so we could be close to our grandparents but she didn’t speak much Japanese and Mama had never used it much at home. So I never really learned a lot. I didn’t go to the public school in Japan. We stayed on base and I went to a military school with the other children of the soldiers but my grandmother taught me some. I thought maybe I would remember a little bit of it if I practiced. It hasn’t been going well. I don’t know much of the kanji.”

He waved the tablet at her and she remembered that that was what they had actually been talking about. He glanced at her as though waiting for her to react somehow. She wondered if some part of the story was inappropriate on Earth. Was leaving your family so young acceptable? The other Paladins had done it as well but perhaps it was considered strange. It would have been strange to meet an Altean that young living without their community no matter how brilliant they were. Even that didn’t undermine that it was an impressive life cut too short. She had done so much and raised two children as well but maybe that was it.

She turned to look at him properly and said, “I’m sorry that you lost your mother so young. She would be proud of you.”

“Would she?” he asked.

“She was a woman who left her family, learned another language and took risky jobs in pursuit of a goal. A woman like that would be proud of a son with drive and discipline and leadership.”

“You say that so simply.”

“Isn’t it? You seem to doubt it.”

“She had ambition and I never really had a goal. I do a thing as well as I can and I sometimes get promotions but that doesn’t mean that I have a goal,” Shiro said. “Everyone around me has always had a goal. They’re going to make the space flight program, they’re going to get a spot on this journey or that one, they have goals of command or of leaving the military to take a job in safer commercial flights so they can raise a family on the ground. I just do what’s expected of me.”

“Yours is a higher calling.”

“Is it?”

“We set goals for ourselves but sometimes fate sets us on paths to where we need to be, Shiro. You didn’t need a goal when you were younger. You were being led here. Voltron was waiting for its paladins and you were waiting for the right battle, something that would be worth fighting. Yours is a different life than your parents’. I am not my mother. I am not my father. You are not either of your mothers and you do not need to carry their goals or their dreams. Someday when this calling has passed, you will have to make another choice but even then, you are on the path to the place where you are needed.”

“You didn’t strike me as spiritual.”

She raised her eyebrows in an imitation of his silent questioning expression. What did he mean by that? He used a tone when he said it like it was a bad thing but she couldn’t quite figure out why it seemed like a bad thing to him.

“Fate and a higher calling?” he asked but the question didn’t make his expression make any more sense.

“If it isn’t fate, if there isn’t some design underlying the way tragedy and joy crash into each other across the universe, then I cannot fathom what we do,” she said.

“Are we fated to win or lose?”

“You cannot be fated to win or lose. You can be fated to be in a certain place at a certain time. What you do with the moment is yours alone. Fate guides us, it does not control us. There is an old Altean belief that there is only one moment of your life that is fated. A single moment in all the years that you will live. That moment is the one that universe needs from you. You will be guided there. You will be given chances to learn the skills you will need and form the relationships that will put you at the best advantage to succeed but when you find that moment, you are the only one who can complete it.”

“How do you know?”

“When we die, Alteans, we have a ceremony in which your family and your friends and your community gathers and as your body burns, they gather around and they discuss the moments that could have been yours. They say that by the time the pyre has burned down, the truth will have been spoken. Someone saw the moment that fate chose for you. But the best lives are the ones where no one can agree. When my mother died no one could decide. She had saved a younger girl from drowning when they were still children, long before she became Queen. She passed a law that ended strict penalties for minor crimes and instituted a system of rehabilitation into the prison system. She denied a treaty that would have allowed the Galra to set up trade posts on Altean soil that they could have used in the first attacks of the war. No one knew that when she died but it might have made all the difference and given us enough time, it gave us a chance. We failed but we might not have been able to fight at all without her.”

“She was a good Queen?” he asked. He wasn’t looking at her as he asked.

“She was and her life is a testament that even in hindsight, we cannot know what we will do that matters to the universe,” Allura said. “So you make every choice as though this is the one that matters. The one that will change the course of history. You do the best you can because this could be the moment that the universe has called you for.”

“So fate has brought us here?”

“Yes, and whether or not this moment is the one it has intended for me or for you, I’m glad of it.”

“Me too,” he said.

“So why are you giving me that look?”

“That look someone might give a street mystic who claims that toes are sentient and the key to true love.”

Shiro started to laugh and when he finally got his composure back, he had pulled her in tight against his side and was snickering into her hair. It was a very nice feeling so she poked him in the ribs until she found a spot where he was ticklish so he would laugh some more.

“Are Altean toes sentient? Should I be worried? Do your toes like me?” he asked grabbing for her hands. He was laughing and squirmed without pulling away from her. She was faster than he was but she let him get a good hold of her wrists so when she slid down, he was easy to pull down after her until they lay on the bed, her pile of pillows knocked on the floor. He was heavy and settled in close. His fingers laced through hers and held her hands back above her head. It was a very nice place to be.

“My toes are just toes,” she said but she wasn’t really thinking about that conversation any more. All her attention was caught by the way his body felt pressed against hers.

“I’m a little disappointed.”

“Sorry.”

He laughed again, his face falling down beside hers as he smothered the laughter.

“Are we sleeping or are we going to find something else to do?” she asked.

He fell still. She was ready to start apologizing and back tracking when he finally raised his head and looked in her eyes. His expression was serious and considering and disconcerting.

“I’m wide awake. We can sleep later,” he said.

“Good,” she said and leaned up to kiss him. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hadn't quite finished this chapter when I sat down to edit, it ended on the "me too" line. I have what I thought was the next chapter written but I think that a sex scene actually fits here and neither of them are particularly inclined to put it off. 
> 
> So the next chapter is smut then there is a chapter after that. 
> 
> Shiro's full name is going to come up in some later chapter, Allura is a little weirded out that he doesn't go by his given name and I'm looking forward to writing that scene. Picking names for his moms that would make a mash up of his last name was fun - I doubt the grandparents from either family were particularly happy with the decision to give the family a combination name but I know a lesbian couple who did that and I thought it was cute so I stole it.
> 
> On a different character note, deciding how Allura feels about Lance is hard for me. She is impressed and confused by Pidge, has more in common with Keith than she expected, is baffled by but has affectionate feelings for Hunk but Lance obviously annoys the hell out of her in every scene they have together. So this sort of distant and mildly-condescending concern is my interpretation of that. 
> 
> (I low-key consider both Keith/Allura and Keith/Shiro as potentially interesting ships but Shiro/Allura is 100% the one that has caught my attention). 
> 
> Author's note too long, blaming the wine. I hope the edit I gave this doesn't suck, gonna go write porn now.


	5. In Bed Together

Shiro was very good at blotting out the rest of the world. He demanded her attention with his gentle hands and solid weight. Forgetting everything else and sinking into the little world between them was as natural as breathing. She pulled her hand out of his grip so she could play with his hair and touch his face. The kissing thing still didn’t appeal to her nearly as much as it did to him but how much he liked it more than made up for that. If he would cuddle in like this for a kiss, then that was more than enough. His mouth moved on hers and she gave up trying to match it exactly. He didn’t seem to care if she was doing it well.

“Are humans weird about sex?” she asked in a lull where he gave her enough space to get a breath.

“Yeah, probably,” he said with a laugh, “Weird how?”

He was nuzzling the side of her face and she paused to shift so that he was touching the silana. Then she paused a little longer. His metal arm was wrapped around her waist and she didn’t remember how it had got there. It was hard but not uncomfortable enough for her to want him to move. His fingers were cupped around her waist and her shirt had slipped up enough that she could feel the smooth metal against her skin.

“Allura?”

“Hmm,” she said before she remembered that she had asked him a question. She tried to clarify, “There are cultures out there where if you take someone to bed, you’re officially married in the morning, that kind of thing.”

“No, there are enough human cultures that for someone out there, maybe, but no,” he said. “Why, do Alteans have strange rules?”

“Alteans? No. Royalty? Oh, yes,” she said.

“Anything I should be concerned about?”

“Not really.”

He propped himself up over her and tilted his head. He looked more amused than worried. She should have cared more. She wasn’t any more worried than he was even though she knew that she was supposed to be. A long time ago, she had gone through a few years of teenage rebellion where she had been willing to do something like this just because of the all the traditions and superstitions that told her she couldn’t. She was the only royal child on the planet. Her mother died when she was young, she had cousins to play with but no siblings to share the rules with. She had been the only person on a planet of millions who had rules about who she could choose to associate with.

She knew that other species had sharp lines between what was considered sex and what was not. She wanted to ask if humans were one of them but didn’t want this conversation to spiral off into a cultural comparison session. That would have been a distraction and she did not want to be distracted. They could compare notes on their cultural baggage later.

Alteans did not have sharp lines. From the bed sharing of children to the physical touch you shared with your closest friends to shared pleasure to choosing a partner to form a bond and start a family with was all just part of a continuum. No part of it needed to be left behind to move onto another. She had still shared beds with her cousins as she got older even though she had also started to form friendships that had a different kind of physicality. The ceremonies and official paperwork were all about the commitment of bonds or records related to mating and blood lines. What you did in the bedroom and with who was considered entirely private and entirely up to the people involved.

“Not really?” Shiro repeated. “You just got all spacy like you were thinking of something else.”

She turned all her attention back to him, reaching up to slide her fingers into his hair and pull him down so they were nose to nose and it was hard to think of anything else.

“Shiro?”

“Yeah?”

“Does it really matter? All those old rules? I’m not asking you for mating or marriage. I don’t care what they would say, all those people who can’t – who aren’t around any more. Does it really matter?”

“I’m curious.”

She sighed and closed her eyes. She didn’t want to keep secrets but it was all so complicated. Old rules and idiot superstitions and as much as a part of her wanted to know how mating and marriage and families were organized in his culture, she didn’t want to know at right that instant. Right that instant she wanted to run her fingers through his hair and see how much of his anatomy was similar to hers.

“Are your curious questions, pressing, important and so essential that they must be answered right now?”

He laughed and she felt it through his body. Blessedly he said, “No, nothing that needs answered right this instant.”

“Then take off your shirt and let me touch you,” she said.

“I guess I can do that for you,” he said with a mock sigh that made her shove him in the shoulder. 

He laughed and kissed her high on the cheek before pulling away from her. He sat up so that his knees were on either side of her thighs and he could pull his shirt back over his head. He dropped it over the edge of the bed and started to lie back down with her but she stopped him with a hand on his stomach. He paused and gave her that questioning look. She let her hand linger as she smiled up at him. He looked down at her and shifted a little as she stroked his stomach with just her finger tips. He bit his lip and his hands fluttered before coming to rest on his own knees as though he wasn’t sure what to do with them.

He watched her as though she was the only thing in the world. She had no idea what she looked like. She was still wearing the flight suit from the battle but she’d left the jacket upstairs so it was just a plain white shirt with pink along the high collar. Her hair had been pulled back tightly when she’d come down but all the rolling around had to have knocked at least some of it out of the pins. With just about anyone else, she would have worried about it but not with him.

His skin was soft and warm and she sat up a little to trace the lines of his body higher. He straightened as she got closer. Silent. He wasn’t usually so silent or so still, not with her, not anymore, not when they were alone. She looked up at him again but his expression wasn’t nervous. He was smiling just a little despite the teeth holding his lower lip in place. She let herself be distracted from his chest to touch his mouth with her fingers. He pressed kiss to them in answer. Her hands fell back to his chest and traced out towards his shoulder. He started to pull away when her hand got to the place where skin became metal in a twist of scar tissue. She stopped and looked up at him.

“It’s ok,” he said.  

She touched him again and this time he didn’t flinch. He didn’t relax either and so she left it. The shiny skin of the scar tissue and the cold of the metal against the warmth of his body bothered her because those scars looked harsh and angry.  He had come to her like this, injuries already healed and so she had never stopped to consider the pain that must have come from it.

It just was.

Seeing it like this was a reminder that it had been done to him.

He had been born with a limb that they had taken from him. His nervous fascination, the way he watched her with unwavering eyes and held himself still so she could run her hands along his skin however she wanted to, brought out a wave of protectiveness. How dare anyone hurt him like that? Her hands found his waist and she pulled herself in close enough to rest her head on his chest and close her eyes. Now was not the time for this wave of anger and she didn’t want him to see it and think it was something else.

“Do I get a turn?” he asked.

“A turn?” she asked. She was disoriented as the moment came back into focus and pushed out other thoughts. He was half undressed and his heart beat was fast and hard under her ear sounding more like a drumbeat than a current. When she was sure that the anger was gone, she tilted her head back to look up at him without pulling away. 

“Are you going to take off your clothes for me?” he asked

“No,” she said.

He shifted and just a hint of a frown line appeared between his eyes.

“If you want them off, you’ll have to do it yourself,” she said.

The laugh he made was more snort than anything else. She pushed away from him and flopped back down onto the bed to lie on her back and stretch. He was still laughing as he leaned down with his metal hand braced beside her head to prop him up over her. His other hand pushed a few stray pieces of hair away from her face before his attention drifted downwards. He was so gentle. Big cyborg soldier man and he was so gentle. Even after spending so much time so close to him, the gentleness still surprised her. She kept expecting something rougher and brusquer and he always gave her this instead.

“Remind me again how many of these you have,” he said tracing the silana on her cheek with his thumb.

“Fifteen,” she said.

“Can I find them all?”

“They’re kind of hard to miss once you get the clothing out of the way.”

He was farther away than she wanted him but he had indulged her petting him so she could try to be a little bit patient. He tilted chin up and she leaned into it, expecting another kiss, instead he pressed his lips to the silanas on her cheeks.

“One, two,” he said.

She started to laugh and pushed his head away. It wasn’t unpleasant but it had taken her by surprise. He pulled back and tucked finger under her shirt so it rested on her stomach. The shirt had been tucked in and he had to pull it loose to get a hold of it but he didn’t touch her skin. Not yet. He raised an eyebrow in a question and she nodded. He pushed the fabric a little higher and she wanted to shake him for going too slow and she wanted to spend a year right where they were, making every moment last.

He had had his hands up her shirt before but it was never this slow or with nothing else to distract her. It was more intense than it should have been. His hand came to rest on her body. It was just touch. But it was slow and he was watching her as his hand spread out across her stomach. She was more aware of every sensation than she usually was. It wasn’t just the warmth of him but the exact textures of his skin and the way each finger moved as his hand slid higher.

She was too attached to this man.

She ignored that thought and arched her back so he could push her shirt higher and she could demand a little more contact than the brush of fingers he was offering her. He was closer and she had missed the moment when he had leaned down. He wasn’t quite close enough for her to lean her head against. He was watching her, checking her expression as his hand wandered up to her ribs. She wanted to demand and to hurry him along but he was so soft about everything that she didn’t have it in her heart to make any demands.

His hand settled on the bottom edge of her breast bone. His fingers had found the silana there by touch alone and he stopped to trace the edges of it and make her shudder. She sank her teeth into her lip and it down hard enough to distract from her urge to say something that would ruin the moment. Whatever was about to come out of her mouth was going to be bad. She was going to demand or beg or otherwise embarrass herself so she kept her teeth against her lip hard enough to hurt because it kept her grounded and halfway sane.

He didn’t stop. Soft and curious and not nearly enough. She arched her back and pulled her shirt the rest of the way off. It was demanding but it was a quiet kind of demanding. She was still wearing a bra and she might have taken that off for him too if she hadn’t noticed his quirk of a smile.

“What?” she asked. She was impressed that she managed to sound almost normal.

“Are you feeling a little impatient?”

“Yes.”

“That’s too bad,” he said.

She sighed and he leaned down beside her and traced the second silana on her chest. One just above her heart and one just below. The lower one was the second largest on her body, only the one on her lower back was bigger. She nestled in against his side now that he was mostly lying with her. His hand found her shoulder next and traced that silana too.

It was too gentle and too slow. It was teasing and frustrating and left her feeling disoriented and needy. She was a princess and most of her friends wouldn’t have dared tease and play like this. Playing and petting and making people wait was her trick and she wasn’t sure if she liked giving up that control to someone else. If it wasn’t so nice to be touched like that, she might have tried. She had gotten used to being the one who took the lead.

He hadn’t taken the lead from her. She’d offered it and he was experimenting with it and he would let her take it back. She knew that and it was enough to keep her from trying.

She lasted another few minutes before she grabbed his metal arm and pushed him off balance so that he fell back against the mattress, lying down beside her so she could press in closer to him. Skin on skin and his little laugh of surprise all made her smile. She put her head on his shoulder and closed her eyes and relaxed. Anything he wanted. Now that she wasn’t so far away from him, it was easier to let him have anything he wanted. His fingers played up and down her arm and she rested her cheek against his bare chest and breathed slowly.

“I’m stalling,” he said into her hair.

“Why?” she asked.

“Because I’m worried.”

“About?”

“About it not working properly,” he said.

“If doesn’t, we can figure something else out.”

“You’re pretty damn comfortable about this.”

“Shiro?” she asked. She did not tell him to shut up. She considered it but didn’t think he’d appreciate it. At some other moment it would have been funny and he would have made a snarky comment back but the nervous stillness was back and there was just the tiniest hint of something in his voice. She might have called it anxiety on someone else but he was too… something… too Shiro for that kind of anxiety. 

“Yeah?”

“I’m happy like this. I’d really like an orgasm and to run my hands over the rest of your skin. I am very confident that both of those things are possible,” she said.

“You’d really like an orgasm?” he repeated.

Was he shy? Was she being too blunt for human conventions? Did she really care? She shrugged but kept her eyes on him. She was pretty sure that he could handle a little bit of bluntness even if it made his cheeks go a little pink and his smile tilt awkwardly to one side.

“It’s been a long time,” she said.

He laughed and rolled into her, nudging her over onto her back. She rearranged herself for him. Lying down and letting her knees settle very far apart. She was still wearing the pants and they were belted and buttoned and in the way but she still wanted the invitation to be very clear. He grabbed her knee and pulled her a little closer to him so that one of her knees lay draped over his legs. He was on his side and very close to her.

His hand slid down her stomach to her waistband and paused. If he had waited more than a moment, she might have exploded but the pause was brief. His fingers fumbled with the belt and the buckle and slid down along her stomach. There was a cluster of silana at the base of her stomach and his palm against them made her sigh but he didn’t stop and she didn’t want him to.

It would have been easier if she wasn’t wearing anything but getting him to stop so she could untangle herself from the position he’d put her in and take off her pants was not something she wanted. Stopping was a stupid thing to do, not when she finally had him close and focused and asking all the right questions instead of questions about politics. This was a little cramped but it worked well enough. Her pants slid down past her hips and made enough room for his hand without having to be taken off.

“What do you like?” he asked.

“This,” she said.

He explored. He was probably looking for things that reminded him of human anatomy and things that didn’t but whatever he found, he didn’t comment on it. He was watching her and she turned her head to hold his gaze. He kissed her while his fingers rubbed circles too low on her body to get her where she wanted to be. She muttered a complaint and twisted her hips but managed to bite back whatever she might have said to him. He paused and that was worse. She grabbed his wrist and tried to order her thoughts.

“Am I doing a bad job?” he asked and the note of anxiety from before wasn’t there.

“What are you trying to do?” she asked.

“Make you squirm.”

“You’re doing too well.”

“Hmm,” he said.

He ran a finger all the way down and then all the way back up again and she tried to follow the touch, to press back into it and demand more. He laughed and cuddled closer, pulling her knee higher and pressing up against her side. She twisted farther and buried her face in his shoulder. Her cheek brushed along the scar tissue and she closed her eyes and let everything that wasn’t him fall away. She was a mess. She hadn’t realized she was starving for this kind of touch until they were deep into it.

“It’s all very,” he paused and she groaned at him as he said, “Closed.”

“Isn’t it rude to have your mouth open at a time like this?” she muttered.

“Your mouth is pretty when it’s open,” he said tilting her chin up for a kiss.

“Other mouth,” she said.

He went still and she kissed him again. His face was still close enough to hers that she could feel him breathing. He kissed her back and she opened her other mouth and licked his fingers. He froze. Truly froze and she dropped away from the kiss to bury her face against his shoulder and close up again.

“Different anatomy?” she asked.

“Little bit, yeah.”

“You’re prone to understatement,” she said.

“You can close your vagina, that’s not that weird,” he said. “Humans can’t but the rest of it feels pretty similar.”

“You’re getting technical because you’re upset,” she said.

“Am I?”

“Aren’t you?”

“Fine, yeah, a little,” he said.

He rubbed up and down the line of the opening. It wasn’t going to get her nearer to the orgasm that was slipping away the longer they talked but it was an intimate sensation that made her close her eyes and lean into him again. He was asking for entry and as much as old habits died hard, she wanted to give it to him. She played dumb for a little longer before finally loosening those lips enough to let him nudge his fingers inside.

It was invasive but not unpleasant. Unfamiliar and unexpected but he was close and for once that careful gentleness was calming rather than frustrating. She cuddled tighter into his shoulder and let herself melt into the strange sensation. Not quite pleasure but still nice. The edge of the orgasm she wasn’t having felt farther away and easier to ignore in favour of this.

If humans couldn’t close their sex organs away, their tongues had to be different from hers and for a little while that thought was enough to keep her from indulging in the urge to suck on his fingers as they slid in deeper. It was rude to open your mouth when you weren’t planning on mating and the tongue didn’t really have use outside of that particular act so she’d never had much of a chance to play with it. This opportunity was too much to pass up.

Usually it stayed tucked up inside and forgotten. She had played with it a little but she had never had a partner who was this comfortable with being this deep in her body before. He had slid two fingers into her and she caught the end of one and sucked a little. There was no sense of taste, just the physicality of the touch but it left her with the urge to taste the rest of Shiro’s skin just to get an idea of what he did taste like.

“I’m not gonna ask,” he said into her ear.

“Because you don’t like it?”

“Because I kind of do but I’m very sure that a human body couldn’t do whatever you’re doing but I’m trying not to ask questions that aren’t immediately pressing,” he said.

She nodded and chuckled.

“This is alright for you?”

“It’s nice.”

“Nice,” he repeated and there was a moment of quiet where they both assessed the word. She meant it but she also didn’t want something nice, she wanted him to take her back to that edge he had had her at before and then push her the rest of the way over. Something in her body language or expression must have hinted at that and he asked, “What do you need to make it better than nice?”

“Higher and harder, a lot harder,” she said.

He fumbled a little but was confident and careful as his hand found the more sensitive places. She almost regretted the loss of him inside her. She shifted and murmured little hints until his fingers were in the place she wanted them. He was gentler than she wanted him to be but that was her impatience talking. He was slow and firm and paid very close attention. If something he did made her gasp and he repeated it, finding the same spot again and rubbing harder until she groaned and squirmed.

He had been tentative and careful but once he had a read on her, he went from tentative to relentless in a heartbeat.

It hadn’t been an exaggeration. It had been a very long time, the last time someone had touched her like this had been before the ground war had started, when Dira had still been alive. It had been a different life, a different world, a different universe. She had been a different person.  Those thoughts rushed away with a wave of sensation that made her head spin. She cried out and Shiro didn’t stop until she had done it again.

She buried her face against his neck in embarrassment. She was too out of practice to keep herself from being loud. He wrapped his arms around her and held her tight. If he was offended that she’d slipped so far out of control, he didn’t mention it and she let herself melt into his arms. He rearranged her so he could loop his arms around her and they could lie face to face.

“Questions, comments, concerns? You seemed to like that,” he said and the laughter in his voice was enough to break through her embarrassment to be caught panting and crying out his name.

“It was alright,” she said and her voice was too uneven to really sell the arrogance she had been shooting for. He laughed harder and pulled her into a tighter hug. Her mock self importance didn’t impress him in the slightest. That was probably a good thing.

“Good to hear,” he said. 

She lay against him a little while longer, getting used to his breathing and his skin and his nearness. He was hers. When she was sobered up from all the touching and the pleasure, she would be able to let go of that thought enough to function in normal society. In that moment, while her silanas were aching with magic she hadn’t let spill out and her body was thrumming with all the touch, she wanted to hold onto him and keep him there forever.

“Is pregnancy something we have to worry about?” he asked in a whisper.

“Thankfully not, Alteans have mating seasons, I am not in mine. Which is good because it’s annoying and unpleasant,” she said.

“Can we?” he asked.

He had obviously taken women to bed before. There was an easy confidence in the way he had touched her, in the way he moved. He wasn’t fumbling or shy until he started trying to talk about it. He wouldn’t look at her directly and he trailed off into vagueness and whispers far too often. It was cute. It was bizarre but it was cute and it wasn’t helping her possessive protective tendencies. She ran her fingers up and down his arm and resisted the urge to make him repeat filthy statements until he was red and stammering. 

“I think we should,” she said. “Take your clothes off.””

“Anything you want, Princess,” he whispered against her ear, his mouth brushed her skin as he spoke.

“You haven’t called me princess in awhile,” she said.

“I thought that was an order,” he said.

He was teasing and she smiled up at him as she said, “It was an order.”

“Then perhaps I should do as I’m told.”

“Probably best,” she said.

They had to rearrange to get the rest of their clothes off. It wasn’t elegant but she didn’t care. His metal hand ended up looped around her back at one point and the drag of the metal skin against the silana at the base of her spine hurt. She was over sensitive but she didn’t stop him. These moments where the prosthetic didn’t bother him were so few and far between that it felt cruel to remind him of it, to make him worry about it more than he already did. It didn’t hurt enough for her to care that much.

She got him down on his back. They were tangled in blankets and she hadn’t gotten a look at him.

Allura ran her hand down his stomach, she had planned to stop and rub where his silana should be. If nothing else he was good at paying attention and if she did it to him, she was pretty sure he’d return the favour later. But her hand hit something else in that space. His stomach was a different shape than a woman’s was but not by much. He was warm and the soft skin was tight over muscle beneath. The thing against the side of her hand was not a part of his stomach. She was very sure of that.

She went still.

“Hey,” he said. “You ok?”

“Yeah,” she said.

She edged her hand along it and he sighed and leaned in closer.

“This is, um,” she paused, “Not what I was expecting to find.”

“Oh, great, yeah, um, ok.”

She ran her fingers down it, tracing the length and the shape and trying to figure out what exactly someone was supposed to do with it.

"What do you do with it?" she asked.

"Um, I, you, I," he started and faltered a few more times as she ran a finger along the edge of the top where the shape became less uniform. She traced it with her finger and followed the creases and lines until he pulled away from her and caught her wrist to keep her from following him. She froze and started to apologize but he just shook his head and leaned his forehead against hers.

"That was just more teasing than I can take right now," he said.

"I'd apologize if you hadn't just had your fingers up inside me while I was shaking on the edge of an orgasm," she said.

"Fine, I deserve it but I still want to do other things to you before you push me over the edge," he said.

She let her hand settle it on his hip instead. The idea of pushing him over the edge with just one finger was extremely appealing. Some other time maybe, some other time when he was more willing to lie back and give up all the control to her hands, she would find out how much teasing he could take. He didn't want to give up that much right now and.

"You're putting off telling me what you plan on doing with this," she said.

"Putting it, um," his tone of voice faltered and went from confident to silent.

"If I promise to say yes, will you tell me?" she asked.

"How do Alteans have sex? Isn't it just sex?"

"Not the question. If you do it like we do then trust me when I say, it isn't going to work well," she said.

His confidence was gone completely and he seemed alarmingly young for the split second that he held her gaze then he buried his face in her hair. He breathed deep and even a few times and she tightened her hold on his hip to keep her hand from drifting back to play with his sex again. His fingers crept back to her thigh and then slid higher so by the time he said the words, she already knew exactly what he meant.

"I want to put it inside you," he said.

She took a moment to collect her thoughts. She had been hoping for something that was somehow better than that. Not that having his fingers inside her hadn't been fine. And it made biological sense, if the females of his species didn't have external genitalia then it would be the only way for mating to work. The concept was fine but she couldn’t quite figure out how exactly that was going to work.

"Ok," she said. It was a stolen expression. One she had picked up from the Paladins and it meant almost nothing to her. She was trying to sort her thoughts, trying to makes sense of the difference and how it all worked, "So it just goes inside?"

"That's the start, not the end," he said. 

"I don't mean to be rude, but it doesn't seem to do much, what happens next?" she asked.

He laughed. He laughed and rolled her over onto her back. The bed was too small and now she was up against the wall and they had to readjust again to get comfortable. He had managed to get her into a position where her knees were spread and his hips were between them and she could feel that piece of his body against her thigh. He shifted his entire body, his hips moved against hers and he said, "Then we do varieties of that until both of us are panting and incoherent."

Her breathing stopped for a minute.

"You want to put your alarmingly sized and shaped sex organ inside me and then rub your entire body against me?" she asked in a flat voice because she wasn’t expecting that.

This was a mating act and everything she knew about mating acts painted them as a very detached kind of experience that was only pleasurable for the person with the penis. She’d always had a pretty clear picture of it as they produce seed and you accept it and you don’t need to touch much to do it. Sex was where you got close and personal and pleasured one another. This was blurrier than that. Close and warm and being able to feel him against her was not how she’d imagined a mating act ever happening in any species.

She must have looked confused.

"Or we can find something else to do," he said in a rush.

"No.”

"No?"

"I want to do that, I really, really want to do that," she said.

He was so close. The idea of continuing on like this, with all of him so close to her was intoxicating. She didn't expect it to get her anywhere near her own orgasm but just the thought of being that close to him and watching him fall apart was more than enough to make up for it.

"We-" hes started then faltered again, as though he hadn't processed what she had said for an extra moment, "Really?"

"Yes," she said.

Yes. Please. Yes.

"I don't want to hurt you," he said.

"You won't, you absolutely won’t," she said.

"I-" he started and she cut him off.

"You can be twice as rough with me as you have been so far. You're not going to hurt me unless you try," she said and then reached up to clap a hand over his mouth, "And I know that you're not going to try. Don't worry about that. I’m stronger than you, if I don’t like it, I’ll let you know."

He wanted to say something, she could see it in his expression, in his stillness, in the way he held his shoulders like he wanted to push away and demand space. She didn't want space but she didn't want to push for things he didn't want. She tilted her head up so her lower lip brushed his but didn't close the kiss herself. She waited.

And waited.

It took a few beats longer than she expected before he shook his head and slid in close to close the kiss and push her mouth open. Her stomach tightened and she grabbed hold of him, pulling him in against her body. He got both arms looped up behind her back and for a few minutes it was just the kiss, whatever anxiety he had, whatever worries he had about hurting her or ruining melted into the kiss until that physical confidence was back again.  

He pushed her knees wide and she was surprised by the rush of vulnerability. He was heavy and warm and while she could have pushed him off, he took up enough space to leave her feeling trapped under him. He nuzzled and kissed, pressing his mouth against her lips and her cheek and down her neck and that was more than enough distraction for her to remind her overactive body that the vulnerability wasn't a danger. She calmed a bit more with each press of his lips. He kissed his way down her neck and along her collar bone and by the time he reached her shoulder and paused to massage her silana, she had melted down into the touch and the warmth of his body.

"Can I?" he asked.

It took her a second to register the words and then to connect them to the feel of him against her in lower places. She nodded and opened herself to him. She was drowning in the touch. It had been too long since she had been so relaxed or so comfortable or sated in the slightest. She wanted another orgasm but she was willing to put that to the side until he had come for her. Giving up her desires for his was easy enough when he asked questions like that.

"Yes, please," she muttered when he still hadn't taken her up on what she had thought was very clear body language.

The feeling of entry was almost unpleasant. She was so turned on, so relaxed and so aligned with his energy that she didn't care but it was still too tight and too awkward and it bordered on pain. This wasn't how it was supposed to happen and even if her mind was willing to try it, her body shuddered at the intrusion. Shiro didn't need to be told to ease off, to go slow, to give her body time to react to this. It slid out and she took a moment to breathe and change where her hips were. It helped a little as he slid in again.  

Altean mating practices rarely bothered with this kind of depth. It wasn't necessary and since it wasn't needed no one ever did it. It was alien and weird and getting better with every stroke. He was heavy and close and his metal hand had sunk into her hair and his other one was curled up along her back so he could rub her silanas. That touch sanded off any last edges. Any last piece of her conscious mind that was worried about traditions or expectations or propriety let go as his hand moved its way up her back.

His hips rocked against hers, pushing her down into the bed. Consistent and repeated and deep. The hand on her back, the sensation of him inside her, the sound of his breath against her neck all started to blur into one experience until she couldn't break it back apart into separate sensations. He was everywhere and it was easy to let that be her whole world.

She arched her back in response to some other touch and it gave her the right angle to press her stomach up into his and get more contact with the silana there. She did it again and he made a happy sound and pressed back into her. It had been easier to just give herself over to what he wanted, he was the one who understood how to do this intensely physical thing. Once she had started moving with him, finding a rhythm where she could match her body to his became her favourite part. This was better, not a thing he was doing to her but a thing they were doing together.

"Come for me," he muttered in her ear.

She might have asked him what he meant but she wasn't sure what to say or how to phrase it and before she could figure it out, his fingers were against her body and they were rubbing hard. He found the right place easily, almost automatically and the touch pushed her over into an orgasm almost as effortlessly. She cried out something incoherent and then muttered his name into his neck as he continued to rock against her. The orgasm made her ache and she wanted him out of her so she could breathe normally and reassess where her own body ended and his began.

"One more time?" he asked.

Maybe she didn't want him out that badly because she said, "Yes, please, again." in a breathless rush.

She wasn't sure which one it was that pushed it too far this time. He had started to lose his composure and his body against hers had become less carefully. He pressed all of his weight into her on each thrust. He was so gentle and the loss of that was fantastic. He was heavy and close and hot and she could feel all of it deep inside her body. Then his fingers were there and coaxing her over the edge of another orgasm with quick hard circles that made her squirm and forget that she was trying to match her movements to his.

She came in a rush of sensations. Trapped and safe and close and warm and a pleasure that bordered on being an ache. Touch that was everywhere and shockingly specific. Her arm brushing against the metal of his, her hair pulling as she fell forward and he still held his fingers twisted in it, breath on her neck, his shoulder under her mouth.

He didn't stop right away but he wasn't far behind her.

His hands tightened and his whole body pressed down. The metal hand on her hip was strong enough to hurt but he let go and grabbed hold of blankets before he could hurt her. His other hand was at the back of her neck and it tightened in her hair. Her head was pulled back and he buried his face in her neck, kissing and nuzzling, it was the gentlest part about him in the moment. When he fell apart it was rougher and harder than she had been braced for.

"Oh," she said.

She stared up at the ceiling as he relaxed in her arms. He pressed closer, held tighter, but the tension in his shoulders let go, the tension in his back ebbed and the hardness of his body against thigh, where it had come to rest after he had pulled out of her in the aftermath, that softened too. She pulled him in, tucked in the edges of the blankets and pet his hair as she tried to decide what to say.

"That was incredible," he said before she could come up with something poetic or carefully worded.

She laughed and said, "It really was, wasn't it?"

"You're alright?"

"I'm perfect, stop fussing over me," she said.

"You are perfect but you should know that I'll fuss over you forever."

"You don't need to."

“But I will. I will,” he said.

He trailed off again. There was something unspoken in it. She nodded but didn’t put it into words. They didn’t need to say it yet. It could be true and unspoken all at once.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This stupid sex scene took a billion years to write. I apologize. I had too many headcanons and had to strip them down in order to get a sex scene that flowed properly so I'm posting it and getting it off my computer so I can get on to writing snuggly morning-after scenes instead.


	6. Astronomically Out of His League

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> POV shift. Hello insecure and madly in love, Shiro, I love you and you're my favourite.

Shiro yawned and started to roll over expecting to find an empty bed but she was still there, her back to him and her hair everywhere . She was still asleep which was enough to make him push himself up and grope for the tablet on the bedside table. He set it as a clock because learning how to read Altean clocks tedious.  Every time screen had too much information about location and comparative solar patterns on nearby planets and all he wanted to know was whether or it was morning . 

It was morning. 

His body had woken at almost the same time it always did. Usually she was long gone to start her day before now. She had dozed off before him but  maybe she had woken in the night and then come back to bed. He liked to watch her sleep when she fell asleep before him.  He didn't know if it was Alteans or  just her but she slept like there was a switch that had  been thrown and she had powered down completely . Still and silent with her breathing so slow it was almost imperceptible. The first time she'd fallen asleep beside him it had been enough to make him panic. Her skin got cooler as well as though her body was producing less heat as it rested. She had been fine.  She had woken when he’d shaken her, mumbled something incoherent and then cuddled back in to power down again .

He  was used to it now but he wasn’t used to her still being there when he woke.  He curled himself back around her, pulling her back into the position they had fallen asleep in with her tucked in against his chest . He pushed out every other thought and let himself think of nothing but this moment.  He didn't let himself worry about how long she had slept, he didn't let himself worry about the others and  whether or not anyone had noticed yet or if it would be an issue, he didn't let himself think too much about the night before or he tried not to let himself think too much about that . 

It wasn’t working. 

He was still trying because moments like this were rare.  Moments where all the rest of it drifted away and he could pretend he was someone else, someone whose life was simple . He could  just be a guy with a crush on a girl who was  astronomically out of his league. 

He sighed. 

Even in his imagined fantasy life, he couldn't make this thing fit. 

It was possible to pretend there was a version of his life where everything was simple and normal.  In that world,there weren't evil alien empires or destroyed civilizations and imperiled civilizations and monsters and lost crews of scientists and ragtag crews of teenagers who all needed him to be more than he was . He could pretend but even in that imagined life, Allura didn't quite fit. She belonged to the other life.  Not only that, she was strong enough and smart enough and brave enough to rise to those challenges and come out the other side intact .  She was so far beyond him that it left him without any clue what he had done to catch her attention or how to be worthy of all the trust she had in him . 

She was  alarmingly beautiful and that didn't make it any easier to figure out what she saw in him.  He had tucked the metal hand up under the ridiculous pile of pillows she had brought him and ran his fingers through her hair to smooth it back from her face . She tilted her head a little but didn't wake. He ran a finger down her cheek and traced the edge of the mark on her cheek bone on his way to her chin. Her skin was soft and perfect and when he reached her chin, he lost his nerve a little and didn't touch her mouth. He wanted to but somehow it felt like too much. In spite of everything else, that would be too much.

He traced her ear and she twitched away, turning her face into the pillow and burrowing back against him in the blankets . He tucked her in more  tightly , wrapping her up and holding her close.  He didn't get why and he knew he didn't deserve it but if there was a small grace period before she realized that, where he  was allowed to have these moments, he wanted to take advantage of them . He would try and be good enough for her and hope that there was something he could give her that would be worth having. 

"Are you awake?" she asked in a mutter. 

"Yes," he said, "Are you alright?"

"I'm perfect," she said in that same hazy mumble. 

"You slept at least twice as long as you usually do." 

"Yeah." 

"That's normal?" 

"Yes.  The explanations my aunties gave say that the rest period improves your chances of getting pregnant-“

He interrupted her, “That’s not going to happen, rght?”

“I meant it about the seasons thing and accidental pregnancy isn’t likely. Most people spend years trying to have a baby. We  probably couldn’t do it if we tried,” she said. 

He let the conversation drop, leaning down to nuzzle her shoulder and try not to think about it. The idea of children was terrifying.  There were already so many people he needed to protect, adding children into the idea  just edged him to close to a moment of panic .  If there was some corner of his thoughts that wanted to ask if it was even possible because that same corner was  desperately curious what those children might look like and liked to feed him little imagined moments of curling up and reading bedtime stories, well, he could ignore it . 

The idea of spending years trying to do anything with her sounded appealing. They could spend years trying to get the high score in some old-school videogame and he’d be happy.  Even spending years trying to dismantle the Galra empire one ship at a time was less of a terrible burden when he could imagine them doing it together .  Someday he would lose her, she would go off to lead the galaxy into the future and he’d  be left behind on Earth to be a hero on the news for a few weeks before slipping into a quiet life as a distance pilot before retiring to consult and disappear from the public eye . 

Shiro was  painfully and  competitively ambitious in some things but he didn’t care if the world remembered his name . It wouldn’t and he didn’t care.  He had cared about making fighter pilot, he had cared about proving that he deserved that spot for more than his mother’s legacy . He cared about keeping his people safe and being the person they thought he was. At the end of the day, it mattered only what he had done.  He would fade into obscurity,  maybe train a few students who would – like Keith – be far better than he was at everything he had worked for . It was a nice idea: to leave a legacy in other people, to have a place in making the best, greater than they might have been. 

People would remember Allura. If the world hadn’t gone to hell, people would have remembered Allura.  If there was a version of the universe where Altea had won, where Allura had taken over as Queen when her father died a quiet and peaceful death, in that world, everyone on her planet would celebrate her name . She was a hero and a leader without fighting for every moment of clarity, for every moment of strength. Her legacy would be her own and he would be proud to be a footnote in it. 

“I like you being awake when I wake up,” she said pulling him back into the moment. 

"I like you being here when I wake up," he said and then immediately regretted it, it sounded too much like a complaint. He was not trying to complain.

"We could do this more often," she said. 

"What part of this?"

"Every part of this but especially the waking up part," she said. "If I went to bed later, we could get up together." 

"That means giving up falling asleep together and if I can only have one,  I think I like that better," he admitted.

She hummed a non-answer and rolled over in his arms. Somehow, he had forgotten that she  was naked .  He was very aware that he was but she twisted and rearranged her knees so that one of them  was dropped over his and  suddenly all he could think about was how close she was . Her hand settled on his chest and she tapped a pattern with her fingers as she thought. He was quiet and still because if he moved or said anything, he was going to embarrass himself. His hand broke ranks with his more conscious thoughts and found her knee then slid up to her thigh. She smiled at him and got  just a little bit closer. 

"Will you go to sleep earlier?" she asked. 

"Earlier?" What had they been talking about? It wasn't the way the muscles in her thigh shifted under her skin. Sleeping arrangements. She was talking about sleeping arrangements. Right. He said, "I could, yes." 

"I want the training room before Keith gets there," she said. 

"That's  really early," he said. 

She laughed and his thoughts short circuited. She closed her eyes when she giggled and when she opened them again she said, "I know.  That is why you'd have to go to bed earlier but we can lie down together," her fingers were on his collar bone and it was making her words blur and she gave him a little smile that said something very different than the laugh had, "And I'll leave you to sleep and go finish whatever logs or flight plans need done and come back to bed when I'm tired . We can figure it out so that we wake up around the same time in the morning. It would take a little while to shift sleep schedules around but we could make it work." 

"Do you want to?" he asked. 

She laughed again he wasn't sure why. She leaned up and kissed him, hard, before she answered. 

“Yes, I want to.” 

"Ok." 

He said it because it was easy and he was still thinking about the kiss and the feel of her hand on his chest and her smile and her leg under his hand and how comfortable she was with him .  He had  accidentally skipped mentioning chaste kisses, the kind you might give when someone said, "Ok," to a romantic suggestion . She kissed him like she meant it every time and he couldn't resist kissing her back  just a little bit harder. She hadn't said that she didn't like it so he was hoping like hell that meant that she did. She met his kiss with a smile and an arm around his neck and her body sliding into the last bit of space between them. 

"What do I have to do today?" she asked as the kiss broke so they could breathe. 

"I don't know," he said. 

"Neither do I," she said with a sigh. 

She rolled away from him and he stopped himself before he grabbed for her. He let his hands trail along her body as she pulled away from him but he didn't grab hold. He did not want her to leave to go do something important up on the bridge. If she went back to her regular life, then he would need to do the same and he wanted this to last  just a little bit longer. At least a few more minutes. A few more minutes of happy and far away. 

Allura leaned off the bed and dug around in discarded clothing until she pulled out a small device that Shiro had started thinking of as an Altean cellphone . She flopped back down beside him on her back and fiddled with the settings before she made a call. The whole process was more graceful than it should have been. The call screen looked the same as the comms screens in the lions so he knew that was what she was doing.  He pulled back a little bit because it was a video screen and he did not want to  be rumpled and undressed in the corner of her call to Coran . 

"Good morning Coran," she said. 

The video screen didn't come up.  Shiro edged back in beside her and played with a piece of her hair while she talked about needing to do some Altean magic thing that would make it difficult for her to  fly the ship if they were in trouble .  Coran declared them in safe space and offered to take the controls in case of emergency and Allura hurried him off the phone and then shut it down and dropped it back off the bed . 

"Did you  just call in sick so you could stay in bed with me?" he asked. 

"It wasn't actually a lie," she said, "I'm  just going to spend most of the day with you first." 

"Is the magic thing bad?" he asked. 

"No, it's like having to sneeze. Usually it isn't a problem but sometimes it is annoying. That's all. I'm full of magic that I don't need and without an illia to balance it, I need to use a machine. It sucks but it's fine." 

"It sucks." 

"Yes." 

"That's no something I've heard you say before," he was smiling at her. 

"I stole it from Pidge, did I use it  incorrectly ?" 

"No but I would counsel against adopting vocabulary from teenagers if I didn't find myself saying some of Lance's stupid shit myself ." 

She laughed again and rolled back into him. This time she didn't stop with her leg thrown over his. Instead, she nudged him onto his back and stretched out, lying down over him. Her stomach pressed against his and caught his cock between them tight enough to make him groan. He caught her hips and held her still, forgetting for the moment that only one of his hands was his. She squirmed and he grabbed her a little harder, pulling their bodies together. 

He didn’t say anything because his thoughts were full of thoughts.  Please don’t get up. You said you would stay. Stay. Right there. Right here. With me. 

"You should roll me over and do last night over again," she said. 

"You should stay right there and do it yourself," he said. 

She went still and he started second guessing the words, his hands, his tone.  He had been trying to flirt but she wasn't flirting back, she was considering him with serious eyes and  maybe he'd said the wrong thing .  He was sure that once upon a time, back on earth, back at the flight academy and even before that on the myriad military bases he had spent his teen years on, he had been able to flirt with girls . Was it so different because she wasn't human? Was he different? Was he saying everything wrong?

Why was it so different? They were  just two people. 

But it was. When he let himself think about it, he knew that. It was different because he wanted her.  He wanted her close, yes, he wanted  all of that but he also wanted her to see him at his best, to see him as someone who deserved the joy of her company and the honour her respect . He hadn't cared so much about  whether or not he was embarrassing himself in his entire life. 

When he’d been fifteen, he had thought he was in love.  His mother had told him that he’d know it was real if it felt like home and felt like the world falling apart all at the same time . He’d thought she was being ridiculous. He hadn’t been in love then. With Allura, his world fell apart into tiny little broken pieces until all that  was left was her. And even in those moments when it was at it’s worst, beside her was the place he felt safest. The place that felt like home. 

He stopped that thought before it came it its natural conclustion. Too much. Too fast. He was flirting –  badly – but flirting. That was all. It was fun. It was a break in all the stress. It was  just two people figuring each other out.  She had narrowed her eyes a little bit as she considered him and the longer it lasted, the more his second guessing got worse .  He was nervous and he wanted her and the word he wouldn’t let himself think was rattling around his thoughts and making everything more confusing . 

"It would work like this?" she asked with a little raise of her eyebrows and enough of a smile to sand off the edges of that anxiety. 

"You're going to have to arrange your knees a little  differently but yeah, like this," he said. 

The frown was tiny but there. He slid his hand from he hip down her thigh and cupped it around the back of her leg to tug a little. She responded immediately. There was no playing coy with Allura if she wanted it or if she didn't, she was never unclear about it. She pushed up on her arms and looked down at him as she let him guide her knee to the other side of his hip. She moved the other one on her own but then sat up far too high on his stomach for what he wanted to happen next. 

She looked down, considering him. It dragged on a few moments longer than he could handle and he said, "Tell me what you want, Princess." 

"I want you to call me by my name," she said. 

He blinked in surprise before he reached up to cup her face in both hands and pull her in a little bit closer and swear to her, "I will do anything you want me to, Allura ." 

"Anything?"

"Yes." 

She laughed again.  He had been dead serious but he laughed along with her because he didn't know how to say it and make her understand how much he meant it without sounding desperate or ridiculous . She leaned down and rested her forehead against his as she laughed. 

When she sobered up, she nuzzled his cheek, rubbing her face along his like a cat. He knew that it was a silana thing and she was following some Altean cuddling guidelines he didn't know. It was weird but he was adapting. If she could learn to kiss, he could learn this face cuddling thing. It was adorable and it brought her close. It was easy to adapt to something that made her seem so cute and cat-like. 

"How about you teach me how to make this position work  properly ," she said. 

He laughed a little harder and pulled her hip down a little lower and she sat up to allow him to position her hips. She had these moments where she was  perfectly pliant, as though she was the one who would do anything he asked.  He put his other hand, the metal hand against her stomach and pushed a little until she was straddling him where he wanted her . He slid it up higher until she was sitting up straight.  He hated the way the metal looked against her skin and he looked up at it, resting against her skin,  just below her breasts and almost panicked . 

The metal hand was a weapon. He owed his life to it on a handful of occasions and he was starting to be able to coexist with it more  easily . He didn't find his thoughts derailing when he caught the gleam of metal out of the corner of his eye anymore. And yet, in moments like these it left him feeling like he was waving around a gun. It wasn't designed for this. It didn't have a place in soft private moments like this. Allura seemed to notice less than he did but it didn't make him like the arm any more. 

Allura didn't notice the hand. She sat up and looked down at him. 

" I think I get it," she said with a grin. 

"Will you stay like that and let me watch you?" he asked. 

"Watch me?" 

"Come closer," he said. 

He caught her hip with his real hand which meant he had to touch himself with the metal one but he ignored that as much as he could as he guided them together . She let him control her position until their bodies bumped together. He felt her open to him and it was disconcerting.  Her body was similar enough to a human's that the little differences jarred even when he knew they were there . She was, as she had been the night before, a little too tight and not quite the right temperature.  It would only take a moment before he stopped caring but that moment of disconnect between expectation and reality was unsettling . 

She didn’t notice as she slid down onto him and squirmed herself lower. She sank down a little at a time. It was possible she was changing some part of her anatomy to make more room. That thought was weird. So much of this was weird. He kept waiting for the moment when it was more than he could handle and that moment never came. It was weird and he wanted her too much to so much as flinch.  When their bodies finally rested together, she sighed and dropped her head back as she pressed in tighter . It was almost enough,  just that first moment friction after a drawn out entry, to push him over the edge. 

"Stay like that," he muttered. 

It was his real hand that he settled on her stomach. He wanted to keep her up where he could watch her as she experimented with the position. He also wanted to rub the pattern of pink shapes that stood out against her belly. She liked it when he touched them. She liked it when he rubbed her back in slow lazy circles and she liked it better when he rubbed harder. He started  gently but she pushed into his hand, he did as she wanted. 

He settled his palm against the silana on the lowest part of her stomach,  just above where their bodies joined and rubbed hard . She reacted immediately, her body pressed down and her back arched. His hips pushed up to meet her on instinct and it was too much and not enough and left him gasping. He stopped and she straightened in a moment of confusion and straining for the touch he had taken away.  She pulled up and then slid down on his cock again as she tried to find the contact he had taken away from her when he’d pulled his hand back . 

He didn’t swear aloud but he couldn’t keep in the groan. 

" Just like that," he said. "Over and over until one of us looses our mind." 

"It will be me," she said. 

"Nah," he said, "I'm already crazy for you." 

She laughed at that and he could feel the way her whole body was a part of the laughter. His hand on her knee tightened.  It was metal, technology that didn't belong to him but it reacted right along with the rest of him as though it wanted the same thing . Closer, he wanted her closer. He also wanted to watch her  just like this. 

Allura was beautiful dressed up in battle gear with her expression and her hair and everything held in careful check . Like this, she was something else  entirely . He didn't have a word for this. She was a mess. Her hair was a tangled curtain around them. Her mouth was open and her lower lip was bright pink because she kept biting it. Her breasts were perfect and as flushed as her face. The vibrant pink stood out on the brown of her skin. The silanas, glowed under his touch or  maybe that was his imagination. She was gorgeous. She was perfect. For this brief shining moment, she had chosen to be his

She experimented with him. 

Confident and curious and full of laughter when it went wrong.  There was no embarrassing Allura, she  just giggled and resettled and pulled him in for a kiss and the moment of awkwardness  was swept away . He stopped worrying about slipping out or making a weird noise because she didn’t care. She wanted touch and she didn’t  really care what it took to get it.  He shifted too much and  nearly knocked her out of bed and all she did was reach out to grab hold of him so he could pull her back in . Perfect trust. 

She was playing with him and it was incredible.  She arched her back, she shifted her hips, she pressed in and pulled herself away until it was  just the tip inside her before sliding all the way back down .  She had never seen some human pornographic movie and didn't bother trying to mimic some thrusting rhythm .  She was playing with him, experimenting with what she liked instead of what some movie showed and he was falling apart to it . She had done everything he had asked of her. And yet. He wasn’t the one leading this thing they had. If anyone had asked, if there was anyone he could tell, he would have told them that she was the one in control. 

When he got close, he caught both her hips in his hands and pulled her tighter to him. He rocked her body against his, pushing up into each thrust, feeling the edge of his orgasm threaten. She let im have that control. She moved with him.  He didn’t need to force anything, he  just needed to suggest it with a gesture or an incoherent noise and she let him decide what he wanted .

She trusted him enough to let him put her wherever he wanted her. 

That was  probably the thought that pushed him over the edge. 

He pressed up into her as he held her close and came hard inside her. He shuddered and crumbled and she settled in over him as soon as he let up pressure on her stomach. He looped his arms around her waist and held her against him. He was starting to soften but he was still buried inside her. It was going to start to ache but that hadn't happened yet and so he pretended that it wouldn't.  He rolled her over because it made it easier to press every inch of himself into her when the mattress was there below her .

He pinned her, cuddled in, and tried to remember to breathe.  He was  silently begging and pleading but he didn’t quite know what he wanted as she pet his hair and waited for him to come back to himself . 

"I wanted you to come," he mumbled into the aftermath. His body already didn't care. His body wanted to eat and then have another few hours of sleep. He ignored that urge. 

"We've got all day for that," she said. 

She was right but he didn't  really care.  Now  was wrapped around him so  tightly that any plans for later felt ridiculous, like they were plans related to some far off, fictional place . He pulled out of her, his cock softening and too sensitive but he wasn’t willing to give up the touch. 

"Are you ok with my mouth?" he asked in a final moment of clarity. 

"I like your mouth  just fine," she said running a thumb along his lower lip. 

"Good," he said. 

He slid down her body then. She said something after him but he didn't hear it as he slid into place between her thighs. He hadn't  really asked if this was acceptable but she had spread her knees to make room for him. he pressed a kiss to her thigh, high enough that he was very sure that she would understand what he was asking for. 

"Shiro?" she said. 

"Do you mind if I?" he asked. 

It was half a sentence but he was breathing against her as he said it. He had thought he was being very clear. She pushed herself up on her elbows and cocked her head at him before nodding. He leaned his head against her thigh for a moment to enjoy the view. She raised her eyebrows at him. He reached up with the wrong hand to touch her body but stopped before he did it. He switched sides, leaning against the metal elbow so he could keep his vantage point and still touch her. 

"I don't mind," she said nodding at the metal hand.

"It doesn't feel the same," he admitted. 

Her fingers had found the metal hand on the bed and were stroking the joints.  It had to  be wired into his nervous system because he knew where she was touching him and how hard and he could tell the difference between materials .  His mind registered whatever the sensors sent as touch and when he let those thoughts in, they turned his stomach a little . Pidge had suggested once that she could build a sensor to figure out how it  was wired into his shoulder.  She seemed delighted by the idea but he hadn't been able to shake the creeping thought of there being wires running through his body where he couldn't see them . 

It was better to  just use his real hand. It was gentler and warmer and completely his. She kept her hand on the one he wasn't looking at and he tried to accept the touch the way she intended it. She was trying to be nice. He held her gaze and laced his fingers with hers. It was nice. It was nice that it didn't bother her. It made it easier to forget and let it be. He still wished it was the hand he had grown up with but it was nice to accept her touch the way she meant it. 

He nuzzled her leg and then slid down to lick her. 

She recoiled and swore.

It was a sharp unfamiliar word in a language he didn’t understand. She sat up so she was farther away from him though she was still holding onto his hand. For a moment she  just stared at him. He was too startled to even  formulate an apology, let alone say it. He stared at her and she stared back. 

"You need to warn me before you do things that are that weird," she said. 

"I didn't mean to be weird," he said. 

"Why?" she said. 

"Why didn't I mean to be weird?"

"Why would you want to do that with your mouth, your actual mouth?"

He sat up and laughed a little. He was so embarrassed it had crossed into something else  entirely . It was  just funny. He sat up and edged a little closer to her and she laughed back, shaking her head. He leaned his forehead against hers and she looped her arm around his neck.  It hadn’t been a bad enough faux pas to make he hate him and that was a relief after the tone she has used when she’d called him weird . 

"I'm sorry for being weird," he said. He was still laughing and she was still looking at him like he had grown an extra head. 

"I don't understand why," she told him. 

"Because it feels good," he said. "At least, I've had good reviews in the past."  That was  probably the most awkward way he could have said it, it sounded like something his roommate back in flight school would have said and that guy had only ever used the word 'banged' when he talked about sex . He was going to embarrass himself further. She  was upset and he needed to respond to that.  He tried to pull himself back together but he wasn't having any luck with anything approaching reasonable .

"Humans are weird," she told him.

"Says the girl who likes to rub her face against mine who has a something in her..." 

She cut him off, "That's not weird. That you have to get so up close and personal to mate is weird." 

"You say that as though you don't like it." 

"I like it but that doesn't mean it isn't weird." 

"Do you want to find out if you'll like this too or should we  just put oral sex on the never list and pretend this didn't happen ?" 

She pulled back a little bit and studied him. Her attention snagged on his mouth and he could see her thinking about it. He wanted her to say yes. The night before it had all been so new and he had been so turned on that he had had to force himself to go slow. Now he  was relaxed and  fully awake and knew enough about what she liked to make it work. He could do it with his hands if she wanted but knowing that she had never tried this made him want to do it more. 

Let me be your first, remember this , was not a sentence he would say but it was still something he wanted. 

"You have teeth." 

"What?  Really ? Are you afraid I'll bite you? Have I ever bit you during a kiss?" 

"That's what you're planning on doing? Kissing?"

"Pretty much," he said. 

"You want to do it." 

"Yes." 

"Why?" 

He closed his eyes and told her the truth, "Because I want to make you come hard enough that you shake and I'm pretty sure I can do a better job of it with my mouth than I can with my hands ." 

"Oh." 

Sometimes he knew what her little exclamation of 'oh' meant and sometimes he didn't. He had no idea at that moment. Not a clue. He waited for her to sort out her thoughts. Her expression was still considering as she chewed on her lower lip and watched him with big blue eyes. She was  breathtakingly beautiful and it hit him all over again how much more she deserved than him. Here he was asking for something she  obviously found dirty and uncomfortable. He was going to back off the request, to give up before they started when she nodded.

"We can try it," she said.

He smiled and pushed down that rush of doubt as he said, "Lie back down for me."

She hesitated but not long enough that he could start worrying about it. He moved back to give her room. She didn't take her eyes off him. He pulled her a little closer so he could lie back down between her legs. He held her gaze and rubbed her with his fingers until she smiled at him and closed her eyes. She kept her lower mouth  tightly closed and he didn't question it.  He changed his position so that he could drape his arm over her stomach and let his fingers play over the silana there instead . She inhaled but didn't move or even open her eyes. He licked her again,  just like he had when he'd freaked her out. This time, she shifted but nodded instead of stopping him.

He stopped worrying so much after that. She was never passive and she moved under him, pushing up and arching her hips to get him where she wanted him to be. The first time he sucked, she gasped. He did it again, harder and with more pressure.

"I'm sorry I doubted this," she said. 

He paused to look up at her with his best attempt at casual teasing, "Did you like that?"

"Less talking, more of that," was the only answer she gave. 

He laughed and did as he had  been told . He went slow because he wanted it to last. Each shift of her hips or little gasp he pulled out of her was perfect. He traced the silana he could reach by touch alone. The cool shiny pattern running up the outside of her thigh, the one on her stomach, the one below her breasts. Her breasts too. He indulged himself in following his impulses and sliding up her body to suck on them.  She blinked at him, giving him a puzzled smile as he kissed his way across her chest to do it to the other one before kissing her mouth . 

He remembered a moment too late that the taste of her was all over his lips but she didn't scold him or pull away. It was a quick kiss before he went back to what he had been doing. It didn't take much more to push her over into an orgasm. She was quieter as her back arched and her head dropped back. He slowed but didn't stop and she muttered his name.

"Louder than that, Princess," he said and then closed his mouth on her again. 

She cried out  softly but he wasn't quite ready for it to be over.  He sucked harder, playing with her, making her twist and fight against the strength of the arm against her stomach .  He was pretty sure that holding her down was impossible but she yielded to him in this even as she thrashed and started to squirm away from him . 

"Shiro, please," she gasped. 

He stopped and climbed back up the bed to lay down beside her. She pulled him in closer and he sprawled out on top of her instead. He could feel the tremours in her stomach and the panting pace of her breath against his shoulder. She kept her head down against his shoulder and nuzzled his neck but didn't say anything. He held her and closed his eyes.

“I love you,” he muttered into her neck. She didn’t answer him. She was still panting and clinging to him. She was soft and gentle and for at least this brief moment, he didn’t doubt that she was his. She held on and melted into his arms. He was possessive and happy and he meant it. He loved her in every way you could love another person. 

**Author's Note:**

> This fic exists because I binge watched Voltron and wanted to test drive the characters and play with some head canons. There wasn't any plot to speak of but now I am full of ideas and I'm really really enjoying playing with characterization and layering in worldbuilding around the edges of what the show has established. Writing this thing makes me happy.


End file.
